LMS (learning platform) on Next.js 16 (App Router), MySQL 8 and Better Auth
Type-checked against the real SDKs, migration applied to a live MySQL 8, connection clients load-tested, then tracked for upstream drift and re-verified when it moves. How we verify
session validation runs in server components and route handlers, not at the edge
What you're getting
Next.js 16 App Router — file-based routing, server components, and the Edge proxy (Next 16's renamed middleware).
MySQL 8 via Drizzle ORM and the mysql2 driver.
Better Auth — self-hosted auth running inside your app against your Postgres (Drizzle adapter).
Learning platform — course catalog (courses → modules → lessons), enrollment join, and per-lesson learner progress tracking.
Setup
bun add next react react-dom drizzle-orm mysql2 better-authDATABASE_URLMySQL connection string (mysql://…)BETTER_AUTH_SECRETgenerate with `openssl rand -base64 32`BETTER_AUTH_URLyour app's base URLApply the schema with bunx drizzle-kit push
Initialization
Database client
LMS schema: courses, modules, lessons, enrollments & progress
Courses & instructorscatalog root with slug unique index, status CHECK, and FK to the Better Auth instructor user
Modules & lessonsordered curriculum units — modules by position within a course, lessons by position within a module with contentType CHECK
Enrollmentscourse↔student join with composite unique enforcing one enrollment per pair
Lesson progress trackingper-learner, per-lesson state rows with status CHECK and composite unique on (studentId, lessonId)
Deploy targets
Decisions and compatibility
Auth runs in proxy.ts (Next 16's renamed middleware) on the Edge runtime: it gates on the session cookie's presence only — full session validation happens in Server Components and route handlers, not in the proxy.
mysql2's pool multiplexes connections; drizzle-orm/mysql2 wraps it. One module-level pool is right for a serverless/edge app — the runtime and the pool handle concurrency.
MySQL has no row-level security: multi-tenant isolation is enforced in application code via the forOrg helper (src/lib/tenant.ts), not by the database. See the tenant-scoping section on SaaS pages.
Self-hosted: Better Auth owns the user/session/account/verification tables. This stack emits them (db/auth-schema.ts) and hands them to the Drizzle adapter, so app-type schemas can foreign-key `user` directly.
Enrollments carry a composite unique on (courseId, studentId) — re-enrolling the same student in the same course is a constraint violation, not a duplicate row.
lessonProgress uses text + CHECK over pgEnum for status, keeping 'not_started'/'in_progress'/'completed' extensible without an ALTER TYPE migration.
MySQL provides no row-level security. On MySQL, multi-tenant isolation is APP-ENFORCED via the forOrg helper (src/lib/tenant.ts), not database-enforced like Postgres RLS. Every org-scoped query MUST go through forOrg — a missed query leaks across tenants. Postgres cells enforce this in the database itself (RLS), so it holds even for a query that forgets to scope.