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Overview

It’s therefore recommend to first quickly scan the content in Custom Types, Arrays and JSON PowerSync integrates well with PostGIS and provides tools for working with geo data.

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PostGIS

In Supabase, the PostGIS extension needs to be added to your project to use this type. Run the following command in the SQL editor to include the PostGIS extension: 
CREATE extension IF NOT EXISTS postgis;
The geography and geometry types are now available in your Postgres.

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Supabase Configuration Example:

This example builds on the To-Do List demo app in our Supabase integration guide.

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Add custom type, array and PostGIS columns to the todos table

--SQL command to update the todos table with 3 additional columns:

ALTER TABLE todos
ADD COLUMN address location_address null,
ADD COLUMN contact_numbers text [] null,
ADD COLUMN location geography (point) null

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Insert a row of data into the table

-- Grab the id of a list object and a user id and create a new todos
INSERT INTO public.todos(description, list_id, created_by, address, location, contact_numbers) VALUES ('Bread', 'list_id', 'user_id', '("1000 S Colorado Blvd.","Denver","CO",80211)', st_point(39.742043, -104.991531), '{000-000-0000, 000-000-0000, 000-000-0000}');
Note the following: Custom type: Specify the value for the address column by wrapping the value in single quotes and comma separate the different location_address properties.
  • '("1000 S Colorado Blvd.","Denver","CO",80211)'
Array: Specify the value of the contact_numbers column, by surrounding the comma-separated array items in curly braces.
  • '{000-000-0000, 000-000-0000, 000-000-0000}'
PostGIS: Specify the value of the location column by using the st_point function and pass in the latitude and longitude
  • st_point(39.742043, -104.991531)

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What this data looks like when querying from the PowerSync Dashboard

These data types show up as follows when querying from the PowerSync Dashboard’s SQL Query editor: 
SELECT * from todos WHERE location IS NOT NULL
location
0101000020E6100000E59CD843FBDE4340E9818FC18AC052C0
This is Postgres’ internal binary representation of the PostGIS type.

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On the Client

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AppSchema example

export const AppSchema = new Schema([
  new Table({
    name: 'todos',
    columns: [
      new Column({ name: 'list_id', type: ColumnType.TEXT }),
      new Column({ name: 'created_at', type: ColumnType.TEXT }),
      new Column({ name: 'completed_at', type: ColumnType.TEXT }),
      new Column({ name: 'description', type: ColumnType.TEXT }),
      new Column({ name: 'completed', type: ColumnType.INTEGER }),
      new Column({ name: 'created_by', type: ColumnType.TEXT }),
      new Column({ name: 'completed_by', type: ColumnType.TEXT }),
      new Column({name: 'address', type: ColumnType.TEXT}),
      new Column({name: 'contact_numbers', type: ColumnType.TEXT})
      new Column({name: 'location', type: ColumnType.TEXT}),
    ],
    indexes: [new Index({ name: 'list', columns: [new IndexedColumn({ name: 'list_id' })] })]
  }),
  new Table({
    name: 'lists',
    columns: [
      new Column({ name: 'created_at', type: ColumnType.TEXT }),
      new Column({ name: 'name', type: ColumnType.TEXT }),
      new Column({ name: 'owner_id', type: ColumnType.TEXT })
    ]
  })
]);
Note:
  • The custom type, array and PostGIS type have been defined as TEXT in the AppSchema. The Postgres PostGIS capabilities are not available because the PowerSync SDK uses SQLite, which only has a limited number of types. This means that everything is replicated into the SQLite database as TEXT values.
  • Depending on your application, you may need to implement functions in the client to parse the values and then other functions to write them back to the Postgres database.

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What does the data look like in SQLite?

The data looks exactly how it’s stored in the Postgres database i.e.
  1. Custom Type: It has the same format as if you inserted it using a SQL statement, i.e.
    1. (1000 S Colorado Blvd.,Denver,CO,80211)
  2. Array: Array types act similar in that it shows the data in the same way it was inserted e.g
    1. {000-000-0000, 000-000-0000, 000-000-0000}
  3. PostGIS: The geography type is transformed into an encoded form of the value.
    1. If you insert coordinates as st_point(39.742043, -104.991531) then it is shown as 0101000020E6100000E59CD843FBDE4340E9818FC18AC052C0

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Sync Rules

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PostGIS

Example use case: Extract x (long) and y (lat) values from a PostGIS type, to use these values independently in an application. Currently, PowerSync supports the following functions that can be used when selecting data in your sync rules: Operators and Functions
  1. ST_AsGeoJSON
  2. ST_AsText
  3. ST_X
  4. ST_Y
IMPORTANT NOTE: These functions will only work if your Postgres instance has the PostGIS extension installed and you’re storing values as type geography or geometry.
# sync-rules.yaml
bucket_definitions:
  global:
    data:
      - SELECT * FROM lists
      - SELECT *, st_x(location) as longitude, st_y(location) as latitude from todos