MikroORM adapter

@paneljs/mikroorm maps live MikroORM entity metadata and row operations onto PanelJS. The UI and Express layer never import MikroORM.

import { mikroormAdapter } from "@paneljs/mikroorm";

const admin = createAdmin({
  adapter: mikroormAdapter({ orm }),
  auth: { getCurrentUser },
});

Peer dependency: @mikro-orm/core ^6.4.0. Your app supplies the matching database driver.

Discovery

There is no separate schema file. After await MikroORM.init(), the adapter reads the ORM's live metadata and maps entities, scalar properties, enums, primary keys, generated values, and relations into PanelJS metadata.

Register names are entity class names or EntitySchema names (User, not the users table name), PascalCase and exact.

CRUD

Each request uses a forked entity manager. Lists and detail views use find / findOne; writes use insert, nativeUpdate, and nativeDelete immediately. Admin writes therefore do not depend on a request-scoped Unit of Work calling flush().

Search uses PostgreSQL or CockroachDB case-insensitive matching when those platforms are detected. Other drivers use the platform's normal LIKE behavior.

Built-in auth

Add the auth entities to your MikroORM configuration:

import { builtInAuthEntities, mikroormAdapter } from "@paneljs/mikroorm";

const orm = await MikroORM.init({
  clientUrl: process.env.DATABASE_URL,
  entities: [...appEntities, ...builtInAuthEntities({ identifier: "email" })],
});

Then use auth: { mode: "built-in", identifier: "email" }. Do not register("ExpressAdminUser") or register("ExpressAdminSession").

Create the first operator with the shared CLI after exporting the initialized adapter from paneljs.config.mjs:

npx paneljs createsuperuser --config ./paneljs.config.mjs

Full walkthrough: Authentication.

Custom actions

The action handler receives client as the initialized MikroORM instance and where: { scope, ids }. Convert that target to a MikroORM filter before a bulk write:

import { mikroormActionWhere } from "@paneljs/mikroorm";
import type { MikroORM } from "@mikro-orm/core";

handler: async ({ client, where }) => {
  const orm = client as MikroORM;
  const count = await orm.em
    .fork()
    .nativeUpdate("Post", mikroormActionWhere(orm, "Post", where), {
      published: true,
    });
  return { message: `Published ${count} posts.` };
};

What this adapter does not do

• Nested relation writes beyond a belongsTo foreign key
• Composite or missing primary keys — those entities are skipped
• Logical AND / OR / NOT in scope(); use simple equality scope in this release
• An uninitialized or metadata-free ORM instance

See MikroORM notes. Install: Express + MikroORM.