Aliasing Tablename & Viewnames

[LRagji]

Problem

In certain scenarios URL length is limited by n factors like a old firewall, router etc, plus the need to join tables all happens in the query parameters makes these URLs long..
Also exposing names of tables directly seems like bathing in a transparent bathroom from security angle
Table name are often descriptive and long

Solution

A LUT can be configured by users at the level of postgREST which will alias these Database Objects to solve most of the issues, its like obfuscation..The idea is to avoid long long URLs which may not work in all scenarios with obfuscation if possible.

Eg:
"long_table_name":"ltn"

This way we dont have to change the database objects to fit postgREST into them

[wolfgangwalther]

Table name are often descriptive and long

Opposite for me, I try to keep them really short - but still descriptive. Otherwise writing ad-hoc queries is annoying.

alias these Database Objects

Our approach is to do that by creating an "api schema" and then to create VIEWs in there. Those can also serve as just aliases, you can even write them really short like this:

CREATE VIEW x AS TABLE y;

(TABLE is a shorthand for SELECT * FROM)

We call this concept "schema isolation" in the docs: https://docs.postgrest.org/en/v12/explanations/schema_isolation.html