Core Concepts

This section covers the fundamental concepts you need to understand to build applications with SpacetimeDB.

Databases

Learn how SpacetimeDB databases work, including modules, publishing, and transactions.

• What is a Database? - Understanding SpacetimeDB databases and modules
• Building & Publishing - Deploy your module to SpacetimeDB
• Transactions - How atomicity and rollback work
• Migrations - Evolving your schema over time
• Inter-Database Communication - Calling reducers in other databases

Tables

Define your data model with tables, columns, and indexes.

• Tables Overview - Declaring and using tables
• Column Types - Supported column types
• Indexes - Optimizing queries with indexes
• Access Permissions - Public vs private tables
• Schedule Tables - Time-based operations

Functions

Implement your application logic with reducers, procedures, and views.

• Reducers - Transactional functions that modify state
• Procedures - Functions that can make external HTTP calls
• Views - Read-only computed queries

Authentication

Secure your application with SpacetimeAuth.

• Authentication - Using OpenID Connect (OIDC) for identity and access control
• SpacetimeAuth Overview - Managed authentication service
• Auth Claims - Using identity and roles

Clients

Connect your frontend to SpacetimeDB.

• SDK Overview - Available client SDKs
• Code Generation - Generate type-safe bindings
• Connecting to SpacetimeDB - Establish and manage client connections
• SDK API Overview - Core API concepts shared across SDKs
• Subscriptions - Subscribe to data and keep a local cache in sync
• Subscription Semantics - Understand subscription consistency and ordering guarantees
• TypeScript, Rust, C#, Unreal - Language-specific references