Utility Globals

Global functions available in queries, procedures, and index hooks. These don't belong to a specific API table — they're available at the top level of any Lua script.

now

local timestamp = now()
-- "2026-04-19T15:30:00Z"

Returns the current UTC time as an ISO 8601 string. Use this for createdAt, updatedAt, and similar timestamp fields.

log

log("processing record: " .. uri)
log("count: " .. tostring(n))

Writes a message to the server logs at debug level. Useful for debugging scripts during development. Log output appears in HappyView's stdout — check your platform's log viewer (Railway logs, docker logs, terminal output) to see it.

TID

local id = TID()
-- "3abc123def456"

Generates a fresh atproto TID (Timestamp Identifier) — a 13-character, base32-sortable string derived from the current timestamp. TIDs are the standard record key format in atproto. Use this when creating records with a specific rkey:

local r = Record(collection, { text = "hello" })
r:set_rkey(TID())
r:save()

toarray

return { items = toarray(results) }

Marks a Lua table so it serializes as a JSON array rather than a JSON object. This matters for empty tables — without toarray, an empty {} becomes a JSON object {} instead of an array [].

-- Without toarray:
return { items = {} }
-- → {"items": {}}

-- With toarray:
return { items = toarray({}) }
-- → {"items": []}

You don't need toarray() on results from db.query, db.search, db.backlinks, or db.raw — those already return properly marked arrays. Use it when you build a table yourself with table.insert() or array-index assignment.