E-commerce store on React Router v8, 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
React Router v8 (framework mode) — SSR, config/file routes under app/, loaders/actions, and resource routes for API endpoints.
MySQL 8 via Drizzle ORM and the mysql2 driver.
Better Auth — self-hosted auth running inside your app against your Postgres (Drizzle adapter).
E-commerce storefront — product catalog with per-SKU variants, guest-compatible carts, and price-snapshotting orders.
Setup
bun add react-router 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
E-commerce schema: product catalog, carts & orders
Product catalog & variantsproducts (display unit) and product_variants (buyable SKUs carrying price_cents and inventory_qty)
Cart & checkoutcarts (nullable user_id for guest shoppers) and cart_items (one row per variant per cart, quantity-bumped on re-add)
Orders & line itemsorders (captured totalCents + status walk) and order_items (frozen sku + unitPriceCents snapshot, variantId set-null on delete)
Deploy targets
Decisions and compatibility
Framework mode (not data/library mode): routes live under app/, declared in app/routes.ts. API endpoints are resource routes (a route module exporting loader/action but no default component).
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.
Money is stored as integer cents on product_variants (price_cents) and snapshotted onto order_items (unit_price_cents) at checkout — repricing or deleting a variant never rewrites order history.
cart_items carries a composite unique on (cart_id, variant_id) so the app bumps quantity rather than inserting duplicate rows; orders.status is a text + CHECK column (pending/paid/shipped/cancelled) to avoid ALTER TYPE migrations.
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.