Butterbase Realtime

Butterbase Realtime

Live database change notifications over WebSocket, with per-row RLS enforcement. Once a table is enabled, INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE events stream to subscribed clients filtered by the same RLS policies that gate reads.

One tool: manage_realtime with two actions: configure and get.

1. The mental model

Postgres (data plane)              Control API                       Browser
─────────────────────              ────────────                      ────────
INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE  ──trigger──► realtime.changes  ──WAL listener─► WebSocket ──► client
                                          │
                                          └── RLS check per (role, user) ──► filter rows

When you configure a table:

1. A Postgres trigger is installed → writes every change to realtime.changes.
2. A LISTEN connection in RealtimeManager reads those changes.
3. For each connected client, the change is RLS-checked as that user before broadcasting.
4. Clients only receive events for rows they could read with a regular SELECT.

2. Prerequisites

Before calling configure, the table must:

1. Exist. Run manage_schema (action: "apply") first. Realtime won't auto-create it.
2. Have RLS configured (if you care about isolation). Realtime respects whatever policies exist via manage_rls. No policies = all events flow to all users of that role. This is the #1 silent leak.
3. Have a primary key. RLS checks query by PK. Tables without one can't be realtime-enabled cleanly.

3. Configure tables

manage_realtime({