Databases

The devx db commands let you spin up ephemeral, persistent, or disposable databases for local development — no Docker Compose files needed.

Commands

devx db spawn

Spin up a database with persistent storage:

# PostgreSQL
devx db spawn postgres --name myapp-db

# MySQL
devx db spawn mysql --name myapp-mysql

# Redis
devx db spawn redis --name cache

Each database runs as a Podman container with a named volume for data persistence. Credentials are printed to stdout on creation.

Flags:

Flag	Description
--name	Name for the database container
--port	Host port to bind (auto-assigned if omitted)
--version	Database version tag (e.g., 16, 8.0)

devx db list

Show all devx-managed databases and their connection strings:

devx db list

NAME           ENGINE     PORT    STATUS    VOLUME
myapp-db       postgres   5432    running   devx-myapp-db
myapp-mysql    mysql      3306    running   devx-myapp-mysql
cache          redis      6379    running   devx-cache

devx db rm

Stop and remove a database container. Data volumes are preserved by default:

devx db rm myapp-db              # Keep the volume
devx db rm myapp-db --volumes    # Delete everything

devx db snapshot

Create, restore, list, and delete zero-SQL point-in-time snapshots of devx-managed volumes. Snapshots are stored as ultra-fast compressed tar archives in ~/.devx/snapshots/.

Useful before running destructive migrations or testing complex state changes — restore to a known-good state in seconds without re-running SQL seed scripts.

# Export the current state of your local database
devx db snapshot create postgres before-migration

# Run your destructive migrations...
# Reset back to the clean snapshot in seconds
devx db snapshot restore postgres before-migration

# View existing snapshots and their sizes
devx db snapshot list postgres

# Clean up
devx db snapshot rm postgres before-migration

Snapshots respect --json output for AI agents, and destructive restorations ask for confirmation unless bypassed with -y.

Declarative Mode

For projects with multiple services, define your databases in devx.yaml:

databases:
  - engine: postgres
    name: api-db
    port: 5432
    version: "16"
  - engine: redis
    name: cache
    port: 6379

Then provision everything at once:

devx up

Connection Strings

After spawning, devx db list shows connection strings you can copy directly into your .env:

DATABASE_URL=postgres://devx:devx@localhost:5432/devx
REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379