PocketBase as a Go library

The win for today: the binary you've been running gets retired. In its place, your own Go program — same admin UI, same API, same pb_data/ — plus one custom route and one event hook that the prebuilt binary could never have. Roughly thirty minutes. This is the lesson the mission has been pointing at.

1. The smallest possible PocketBase (10 min)

In a fresh directory:

go mod init pbapp
go get github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase

// main.go
package main
 
import (
	"log"
 
	"github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase"
)
 
func main() {
	app := pocketbase.New()
 
	if err := app.Start(); err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
}

go run . serve

Open http://127.0.0.1:8090/_/ — it's all there. pb_data/ is created in the working directory; copy the one from lessons 1–2 in beside main.go (stop the old binary first) and your users, posts, and rules come with it.

2. A custom route (10 min)

Routes are registered in the OnServe hook, on se.Router (Go routing):

import (
	"github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase/core"
)
 
// inside main(), before app.Start():
app.OnServe().BindFunc(func(se *core.ServeEvent) error {
	se.Router.GET("/api/stats", func(e *core.RequestEvent) error {
		total, err := e.App.CountRecords("posts")
		if err != nil {
			return err
		}
		return e.JSON(200, map[string]any{"posts": total})
	})
	return se.Next()
})

Restart, then curl http://127.0.0.1:8090/api/stats. That endpoint doesn't exist in vanilla PocketBase — it's yours.

3. Your first hook (10 min)

Hooks intercept lifecycle events. Scope them to a collection by name, and always call e.Next() to let the chain continue — code before it runs before the operation, code after it runs after (Go event hooks):

app.OnRecordCreate("posts").BindFunc(func(e *core.RecordEvent) error {
	if e.Record.GetString("slug") == "" {
		e.Record.Set("slug", slugify(e.Record.GetString("title")))
	}
	return e.Next() // validation + INSERT happen here
})

Add a slug text field to posts in the dashboard, write a five-line slugify (lowercase, spaces to hyphens — you've done this in Ink), restart, and create a post as Alice with no slug. Fetch it back: the server filled it in. No client — curl or SDK — can skip this logic, which is precisely what rules alone couldn't express.

Check yourself

Primary source

Read the Go overview and skim the event hooks catalogue — the catalogue is worth ten minutes just to know what exists: request hooks, lifecycle hooks, success/error variants, mailer and realtime hooks.

Keep for reference

New cheat sheet for this layer: the Go extension cheat sheet — the minimal main.go, the hook timing model, and the route registration pattern.

Next

Lesson 4 makes the Go layer production-shaped: migrations as Go code, so your collections live in version control instead of only in pb_data/ — the thing that makes a PocketBase project reviewable and deployable like the rest of your work.