Dashboard quick start

This quick start tutorial shows you how to use the dashboard to start learning the Fauna Query Language (FQL). It takes you through the first steps of logging in to the Dashboard Shell, creating and viewing a database, and submitting an FQL query.

Before you start, view the browser requirements.

Step 1: Register or log in to your account

Go to https://dashboard.fauna.com/register, enter your Email and Password, and click the SIGN UP button.

If you already have an account, choose Sign in, enter your Email and Password, and click the SIGN IN button.

Dashboard quick start

Step 2: Create a database

Create a database and populate it with demo data.

  1. On the Home page, click the CREATE DATABASE button:

     

     

     

  2. Enter a database Name. The name must match the following regular expression and can’t be a single underscore: [a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*.

    Next,

    • Choose a Region Group.

    • Select Enable Static Typing.

    • Select Use demo data.

    • Disable Backups.

      You can leave all other settings at their default values.

  3. Click the CREATE button.

Your database is now available and populated with demo data.

Dashboard quick start

 

Dashboard quick start

Step 3: Browse the database

This introductory exercise shows you how to open a database in the UI, view collections, which are equivalent to tables in a traditional database, and view documents in the collection.

  1. To view the database created in the preceding step, select Explorer:

  2. In the Explorer window, expand the Region Group you chose in the preceding step and click your database name to view the database contents:

  3. The bottom of the Explorer window shows the database Collections, user-defined Functions, Roles, and Access Providers entities, which are populated with demo data.

    Click Collections to view the collections:

    To see actions you can take on a collection, hover over the collection name in the list and click the hamburger icon to the right.

  4. To list the Documents in the Customer Collection, click the Customer collection in the collection list:

  5. To view a Document, click the document in the Document menu.

    The document contents returned by the FQL query are displayed in the Dashboard Shell on the right. You can edit the document and click the SAVE button to save your updates to the document.

    For any of the database entities, you can click the + to the right to create another such entity.

Dashboard quick start

Dashboard quick start

Dashboard quick start

Dashboard quick start

Dashboard quick start

In the same way that you browsed documents, you can view, create, and change Functions, Roles, and Access Providers by selecting the entity in the lower Explorer panel menu bar.

Step 4: Submit an FQL query

This step shows you how to use the Dashboard to manually construct and submit an FQL query.

You can enter FQL queries in the SHELL window on the right from the previous step.

Close any tabs you created, except the left-most database tab, and click the Clear shell icon on the right to refresh the edit window. Click the TYPECHECK button to enable type checking if needed:

Dashboard quick start

This basic example creates a Collection but you can submit any FQL query to become more familiar with the Dashboard and the Fauna Query Language.

If you get an error response, the error message indicates the likely cause of the error, usually a typo. Clear the SHELL window, fix the query, and try again.

  1. Copy this query and paste it to your SHELL window to create a Collection named Hello:

     

     

  2. Enter Ctrl + Enter or click the right arrow button in the lower left to submit the request:

  3. You should see output similar to the following response:

Collection.create({ name: "Hello" })

 

Dashboard quick start

 

{
  name: "Hello",
  coll: Collection,
  ts: Time("2023-05-30T17:32:24.655Z"),
  indexes: {},
  constraints: []
}

Try other FQL API methods to discover more Fauna features.

Next steps

In this quick start, you’ve learned how to use the Dashboard to navigate the user interface, create a database, and make changes to the database.

To gain a deeper understanding of Fauna features and capabilities, continue with the Basic cookbook and the hands-on tutorials.

The FQL language reference, FQL API reference, and FSL reference documentation are resources for detailed FQL information.

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