Saving Data

To create a new document in the specified collection:

POST /apps/{app}/collections/{collection}
Content-Type: application/json
Body: <JSON data>   

curl -X POST -d '{ "username": "baileys", "date_of_birth": "June 9, 1978", "full_name": "Bailey Stringer"}' \
    -H "X-Flybase-API-Key: 74c8062f-cd6f-4c07-8baf-b1h241496dec" \
    https://api.flybase.io/apps/web/collections/users

When a JSON object is saved to Flybase, the object properties are automatically added to the collection you specified, in this case users. Now if we navigate to our web app in our dashboard, we’ll see the value “Bailey Stringer” in the users collection.

The above example will result in the same data being saved to your Flybase app:

{
    "users": {
        "_id": "uniquedocumentid",
        "username": "baileys",
        "date_of_birth": "July 4, 2004",
        "full_name": "Bailey Stringer"
    }
}

Every record will have a unique _id field, which we use later when we push updates.

If you POST a document that contains an _id field, the effect will be to overwrite any existing document with that _id. When your document already includes an _id value, think of POST like “save” or “upsert” (discussed below) rather than “create” or “insert”.

One consequence of this behavior: for a document with an _id specified, there is no straightforward way in the API to realize a pure “insert” — that is, an operation that refuses to modify a pre-existing document with that _id. POST will save over the old document; PUT will modify it. If this property is problematic for your application, consider using a field other than _id, with its own index to enforce uniqueness.Updating Existing Data

You can update existing data in one of two ways. The first is by passing data to a document matching the specified _id. If no document matching the specified _idalready exists, it creates a new document. The data payload should contain a replacement document or update modifiers:

PUT /apps/{app}/collections/{collection}/{_id}
Content-Type: application/json 
Body: <JSON data>

curl -X PUT -d '{ "x": "3" }' \
    -H "X-Flybase-API-Key: 74c8062f-cd6f-4c07-8baf-b1h241496dec" \
    https://api.flybase.io/apps/web/collections/users/1234

The other method to modify data is by performing a query which lets you modify multiple documents:

To update one or more documents in the specified collection, use a PUT request with a replacement document or update modifiers in the body:

PUT /apps/{app}/collections/{collection}
Content-Type: application/json
Body: <JSON data>

Example setting “x” to 3 in the document with “_id” = 1234

curl -X PUT -d '{ "x": "3" }' \
    -H "X-Flybase-API-Key: 74c8062f-cd6f-4c07-8baf-b1h241496dec" \
    https://api.flybase.io/apps/web/collections/users?q={"_id":1234}        

Server Values#

Flybase lets you specify variables that are set on the server end. This is handy for dealing with cases such as users in multiple timezones and you want to store a timestamp locally to the Flybase servers.

curl -X POST -d '{ "username": "baileys", "date_of_birth": "June 9, 1978", "full_name": "Bailey Stringer","registered_date": "Flybase.ServerValue.TIMESTAMP"}' \
    -H "X-Flybase-API-Key: 74c8062f-cd6f-4c07-8baf-b1h241496dec" \
    https://api.flybase.io/apps/web/collections/users

HTML Status Codes#

The API commonly returns the following codes. For further reference, see W3C’s documentation.

In the next section on Reading Data, we’ll learn how to read this data from Flybase