Your First Project

This tutorial walks through creating a project from scratch. By the end you will have two tables in a database with generated types.

Initialize the project

alab init

This creates:

project/
├── alab.yaml
├── schemas/
├── migrations/
└── types/

Edit alab.yaml to point at a database. For this tutorial, SQLite is the easiest option:

database:
  dialect: sqlite
  url: ./dev.db

schemas: ./schemas
migrations: ./migrations

Define a users table

alab table auth user

Open schemas/auth/user.js and define the columns:

export default table({
  id: col.id(),
  email: col.email().unique(),
  username: col.username(),
  password: col.password_hash(),
  is_active: col.flag(true),
})
  .timestamps();

A few things to notice:

• col.email() is a semantic type — it produces a VARCHAR(255) with an OpenAPI format: "email" hint and a validation pattern. You could write col.string(255) instead, but the semantic version carries more metadata.
• col.password_hash() is hidden from API exports. It exists in the database but won’t appear in generated types or OpenAPI output.
• col.flag(true) defaults to true — no need to chain .default(true).
• .timestamps() adds created_at and updated_at columns automatically.

Define a posts table

alab table blog post

Edit schemas/blog/post.js:

export default table({
  id: col.id(),
  title: col.title(),
  slug: col.slug(),
  body: col.body(),
  status: col.enum(["draft", "published", "archived"]).default("draft"),
  author: col.belongs_to("auth.user"),
})
  .timestamps()
  .soft_delete();

• col.slug() is automatically unique with a slug-format validation pattern.
• col.belongs_to("auth.user") creates an author_id foreign key column referencing auth_user.id.
• .soft_delete() adds a nullable deleted_at column.

Generate and apply the migration

alab new initial_schema

This compares your schema files against an empty state and generates migrations/001_initial_schema.js with up() and down() functions.

Preview the SQL:

alab migrate --dry

Apply it:

alab migrate

Check the result

alab status

This opens a TUI showing your schema state, migration history, and verification status. You should see both tables created with all columns, indexes, and the foreign key from blog_post.author_id to auth_user.id.

What you have now

• Two tables (auth_user, blog_post) in your database
• A migration file that can be rolled back with alab rollback
• TypeScript definitions for IDE support
• A schema that serves as the single source of truth for everything downstream