Archen is a simple, flexible and fast GraphQL library written in TypeScript. It turns an existing relational database into a full GraphQL API — queries, mutations, relations, cursor pagination and aggregates — generated from your tables and foreign keys.

npm install archen
# plus a driver: mysql2 | pg | sqlite3

In the simplest form, archen needs nothing more than the details to connect to an existing database — it introspects the schema for you.

const { Archen } = require('archen');

const archen = new Archen({
  database: {
    connection: {
      dialect: 'mysql',
      connection: { user: 'root', password: 'secret', database: 'example' },
    },
  },
});

await archen.bootstrap();

const data = await archen.query({
  source: `
    query {
      users(where: { status: 1 }, limit: 10) {
        id
        email
        orders { code }
      }
    }
  `,
});

New here? Start with the Getting started guide.

Getting started

• Getting started — install, bootstrap, first query and mutation

Guides

• Configuration — connection, introspection vs. explicit schema, options
• Querying — lists, single rows, ordering, limits, selecting relations
• Filtering — operators, and/or/not, foreign-key and relation filters
• Pagination — cursor-based connections (first/after, last/before)
• Mutations — create/update/upsert/delete and nested relation writes
• Relations — foreign keys, one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many

Advanced

• Aggregates — count/sum/avg/min/max and groupBy
• JSON fields — filtering into json/jsonb columns
• Access control — which models and operations are exposed
• Hooks — onQuery/onResult/onError for auth, scoping and auditing
• Error handling — GraphQLQueryError and structured errors
• Typed queries (codegen) — export SDL and get typed query() calls
• Accessor API — the programmatic layer and per-request context

See the example folder for a Next.js app that serves the generated API behind a GraphiQL explorer.

# SQLite
DB_TYPE=sqlite3 npm test

# PostgreSQL
DB_TYPE=postgres DB_USER=postgres npm test

# MySQL
DB_TYPE=mysql DB_USER=root DB_PASS=secret npm test

Type-check (including the test suite) with npm run typecheck; build with npm run build.