Tomi Turtiainen
1.4 KiB
Database
n8n persists its state in a relational database, accessed through TypeORM. The
schema supports both SQLite (the default) and PostgreSQL, and is defined by the
migrations in @n8n/db rather than the entities (entities run with
synchronize: false).
Schema reference
Auto-generated documentation of the schema, one set per supported database:
Each set lists every table with its columns, types, defaults, indexes, and
foreign keys, plus a Mermaid ER diagram of the relationships. The two differ
where the column types do (e.g. datetime vs timestamptz, text/simple-json
vs json/jsonb, boolean representation).
How it's generated
The generator spins up an empty database, runs the full @n8n/db migration set
against it, and points tbls at the result.
SQLite uses a throwaway file; PostgreSQL uses a throwaway testcontainer, so
Docker is required.
# Regenerate both (requires Docker; tbls locally via `brew install tbls`)
pnpm db:schema:docs
# Verify the committed docs match the current migrations
pnpm db:schema:check
The schema reference is auto-generated — do not edit by hand. CI fails when
a migration changes the schema but the docs weren't regenerated; when that
happens, run pnpm db:schema:docs and commit the result.