Scaffolding a CRUD resource

⏱ 6 min · 🎯 you'll have: a complete Post resource with create/read/update/delete instructions, events, errors, and TS test.

The CRUD recipe is the fastest way to add a new resource to an existing program. It composes the primitive scaffolders (account, instruction, event, error) into a coherent slice.

Pre-requisites

A workspace already created with sunscreen chain new.
At least one program in programs/.

Run

sunscreen scaffold crud Post --program my_app

Output (truncated):

✓ scaffolded account: Post
✓ scaffolded instructions: create_post, read_post, update_post, delete_post
✓ scaffolded events: PostCreated, PostUpdated, PostDeleted
✓ scaffolded errors: PostNotFound, PostUnauthorized
✓ tests/post.spec.ts

What was generated

File	Purpose
`programs/my_app/src/state/post.rs`	`Post` account struct with `#[account]`
`programs/my_app/src/instructions/create_post.rs`	`create_post` handler
`programs/my_app/src/instructions/read_post.rs`	`read_post` handler
`programs/my_app/src/instructions/update_post.rs`	`update_post` handler
`programs/my_app/src/instructions/delete_post.rs`	`delete_post` handler
`programs/my_app/src/events.rs` (patched)	`PostCreated`, `PostUpdated`, `PostDeleted` events
`programs/my_app/src/errors.rs` (patched)	`PostNotFound`, `PostUnauthorized` variants
`tests/post.spec.ts`	TypeScript test scaffolding the four ops

All writes happen inside marker regions. Hand-edit anywhere outside the markers and your changes survive future scaffolds.

Options

sunscreen scaffold crud Post \
  --program my_app \
  --fields "title:string,body:string,author:pubkey,created_at:i64" \
  --frontend-hook \
  --json

Flag	Default	What it does
`--program <name>`	required	program to scaffold into
`--fields "<spec>"`	`title:string,body:string`	comma-separated `name:type` pairs for the account struct
`--frontend-hook`	off	also generate React Query hooks (requires `frontend: react` in `sunscreen.yml`)
`--dry-run`	off	print what would change without writing
`--json`	off	machine-readable summary
`--force`	off	overwrite existing conflicting symbols

Idempotency

Re-running the same command is a no-op:

sunscreen scaffold crud Post --program my_app
# error: account "Post" already exists in program "my_app" (exit 4)

Add --force if you really want to regenerate (will not clobber hand-edits outside markers).

What "fields" supports

Spec syntax	Anchor type
`name:string`	`String`
`name:bool`	`bool`
`name:u64` (also `u8`, `u16`, `u32`, `u128`)	matching unsigned int
`name:i64` (also `i8`, `i16`, `i32`, `i128`)	matching signed int
`name:pubkey`	`Pubkey`
`name:vec<u8>`	`Vec<u8>` (limited to 256 bytes)

Complex types (nested structs, large vectors) need manual editing.

Build and test

sunscreen chain build
anchor test

The generated tests/post.spec.ts exercises each of the four operations end-to-end against a local validator.

Going further

Recipe reference: CRUD — every flag, every generated file.
SPL Token recipe and Metaplex NFT recipe — other composite recipes.
Marker protocol — understand how regenerations stay safe.

Sunscreen