Bun Use Gel with Bun

Use Gel with Bun

Gel (formerly EdgeDB) is a graph-relational database powered by Postgres under the hood. It provides a declarative schema language, migrations system, and object-oriented query language, in addition to supporting raw SQL queries. It solves the object-relational mapping problem at the database layer, eliminating the need for an ORM library in your application code.

---

First, install Gel if you haven't already.

``sh Linux/macOS terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}} curl https://www.geldata.com/sh --proto "=https" -sSf1 | sh ``

``sh Windows terminal icon="windows" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}} irm https://www.geldata.com/ps1 | iex ``

``sh Homebrew terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}} brew install geldata/tap/gel-cli ``

---

Use bun init to create a fresh project.

```sh terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}} mkdir my-edgedb-app cd my-edgedb-app bun init -y

***

We'll use the Gel CLI to initialize a Gel instance for our project. This creates a `gel.toml` file in our project root.

```sh terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}}
gel project init

``txt theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}} No gel.toml found in /Users/colinmcd94/Documents/bun/fun/examples/my-gel-app or above Do you want to initialize a new project? [Y/n] > Y Specify the name of Gel instance to use with this project [default: my_gel_app]: > my_gel_app Checking Gel versions... Specify the version of Gel to use with this project [default: x.y]: > x.y ┌─────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Project directory │ /Users/colinmcd94/Documents/bun/fun/examples/my-gel-app │ │ Project config │ /Users/colinmcd94/Documents/bun/fun/examples/my-gel-app/gel.toml│ │ Schema dir (empty) │ /Users/colinmcd94/Documents/bun/fun/examples/my-gel-app/dbschema│ │ Installation method │ portable package │ │ Version │ x.y+6d5921b │ │ Instance name │ my_gel_app │ └─────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Version x.y+6d5921b is already downloaded Initializing Gel instance... Applying migrations... Everything is up to date. Revision initial Project initialized. To connect to my_gel_app, run gel`

***

To see if the database is running, let's open a REPL and run a simple query.

```sh terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}}
gel
gel> select 1 + 1;

```txt theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}} 2

Then run `\quit` to exit the REPL.

```sh terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}}
gel> \quit

---

With the project initialized, we can define a schema. The gel project init command already created a dbschema/default.esdl file to contain our schema.

```txt File Tree icon="folder-tree" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}} dbschema ├── default.esdl └── migrations

***

Open that file and paste the following contents.

```ts default.esdl icon="file-code" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}}
module default {
  type Movie {
    required title: str;
    releaseYear: int64;
  }
};

---

Then generate and apply an initial migration.

```sh terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}} gel migration create

```txt  theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}}
Created /Users/colinmcd94/Documents/bun/fun/examples/my-gel-app/dbschema/migrations/00001.edgeql, id: m1uwekrn4ni4qs7ul7hfar4xemm5kkxlpswolcoyqj3xdhweomwjrq

```sh terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}} gel migrate

```txt  theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}}
Applied m1uwekrn4ni4qs7ul7hfar4xemm5kkxlpswolcoyqj3xdhweomwjrq (00001.edgeql)

---

With our schema applied, let's execute some queries using Gel's JavaScript client library. We'll install the client library and Gel's codegen CLI, and create a seed.ts.file.

```sh terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}} bun add gel bun add -D @gel/generate touch seed.ts

***

Paste the following code into `seed.ts`.

The client auto-connects to the database. We insert a couple movies using the `.execute()` method. We will use EdgeQL's `for` expression to turn this bulk insert into a single optimized query.

```ts seed.ts icon="https://mintcdn.com/bun-1dd33a4e/nIz6GtMH5K-dfXeV/icons/typescript.svg?fit=max&auto=format&n=nIz6GtMH5K-dfXeV&q=85&s=5d73d76daf7eb7b158469d8c30d349b0" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}}
import { createClient } from "gel";

const client = createClient();

const INSERT_MOVIE = `
  with movies := >>$movies
  for movie in array_unpack(movies) union (
    insert Movie {
      title := movie.title,
      releaseYear := movie.year,
    }
  )
`;

const movies = [
  { title: "The Matrix", year: 1999 },
  { title: "The Matrix Reloaded", year: 2003 },
  { title: "The Matrix Revolutions", year: 2003 },
];

await client.execute(INSERT_MOVIE, { movies });

console.log(`Seeding complete.`);
process.exit();

---

Then run this file with Bun.

```sh terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}} bun run seed.ts

```txt  theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}}
Seeding complete.

---

Gel implements a number of code generation tools for TypeScript. To query our newly seeded database in a typesafe way, we'll use @gel/generate to code-generate the EdgeQL query builder.

```sh terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}} bunx @gel/generate edgeql-js

```txt  theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}}
Generating query builder...
Detected tsconfig.json, generating TypeScript files.
   To override this, use the --target flag.
   Run `npx @edgedb/generate --help` for full options.
Introspecting database schema...
Writing files to ./dbschema/edgeql-js
Generation complete! 🤘
Checking the generated query builder into version control
is not recommended. Would you like to update .gitignore to ignore
the query builder directory? The following line will be added:

   dbschema/edgeql-js

[y/n] (leave blank for "y")
> y

---

In index.ts, we can import the generated query builder from ./dbschema/edgeql-js and write a simple select query.

```ts index.ts icon="https://mintcdn.com/bun-1dd33a4e/nIz6GtMH5K-dfXeV/icons/typescript.svg?fit=max&auto=format&n=nIz6GtMH5K-dfXeV&q=85&s=5d73d76daf7eb7b158469d8c30d349b0" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}} import { createClient } from "gel"; import e from "./dbschema/edgeql-js";

const client = createClient();

const query = e.select(e.Movie, () => ({ title: true, releaseYear: true, }));

const results = await query.run(client); console.log(results);

results; // { title: string, releaseYear: number | null }[]

***

Running the file with Bun, we can see the list of movies we inserted.

```sh terminal icon="terminal" theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}}
bun run index.ts

```txt theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"dracula"}} [ { title: "The Matrix", releaseYear: 1999 }, { title: "The Matrix Reloaded", releaseYear: 2003 }, { title: "The Matrix Revolutions", releaseYear: 2003 } ]

***

For complete documentation, refer to the [Gel docs](https://docs.geldata.com/).

## Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

- **Author:** [jarle](https://github.com/jarle)
- **Source:** [jarle/bun-skills](https://github.com/jarle/bun-skills)
- **License:** MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.