Building apps
What is CRUD?
CRUD stands for create, read, update, and delete: the four basic operations performed on stored data, and the foundation of almost every business application.
New to Bolt? Sign up free.
Technical definition
CRUD names the four fundamental persistent storage operations:
- Create: add a new record
- Read: retrieve one or many records
- Update: modify an existing record
- Delete: remove a record
These map to SQL statements as INSERT, SELECT, UPDATE, and DELETE, and to HTTP methods in a REST API as POST, GET, PUT or PATCH, and DELETE. A CRUD application is one whose primary function is managing records through these operations.
In plain terms
CRUD is the four things you can do with a record: make one, look at it, change it, get rid of it.
That is it. Every list of customers, bookings, invoices, or tasks you have ever used is those four operations with a nicer interface.
Why it matters
CRUD is a useful thing to know because it makes custom software less intimidating than it sounds.
The SaaS product you pay 200 dollars a month for is, underneath, create, read, update, and delete on a handful of record types, plus the rules specific to that business. When you strip a CRM down, it is contacts, deals, and notes with four operations each.
That reframing changes what feels buildable. Describing your own tool becomes concrete: name the record types, then say who can do which of the four operations to each. That description is most of a specification.
The part that is genuinely yours is the rules layered on top: what happens when a booking is created, who is allowed to delete an invoice, what a record must contain to be valid. Those rules are also the reason a generic product never quite fits.
