Prisma 2.0 is in Beta: Type-safe Database Access with Prisma Client

Contents

• Modern database access with Prisma Client 2.0
• What's in this release?
• Renaming the prisma2 repository to prisma
• Renaming the prisma2 CLI
• I currently use Prisma 1; what should I do?
• Try out Prisma 2.0 and share your feedback

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TL;DR

• The Prisma 2.0 Beta is ready. With the new website and documentation, it's now the default for new developers getting started with Prisma.
• Prisma 2.0 mainly consists of Prisma Client, an auto-generated and type-safe query builder for Node.js and TypeScript. Prisma Migrate is considered experimental.
• The prisma/prisma2 repo has been renamed to prisma/prisma (and the former Prisma 1 repo prisma/prisma repo is now called prisma/prisma1).

Try the new Prisma Client in 5 minutes by following the Quickstart in the new docs.

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Modern database access with Prisma Client 2.0

The new version of Prisma Client is a modern database access library for Node.js and TypeScript. It can be used as an alternative to traditional ORMs and SQL query builders to read and write data in your database.

To set it up, you need a Prisma schema file and must add Prisma Client as a dependency to your project:

Prisma Client can be used in any Node.js or TypeScript backend application (including serverless applications and microservices). This can be a REST API, a GraphQL API, a gRPC API, or anything else that needs a database.

Be more productive with your database

The main goal of Prisma Client is to increase the productivity of application developers when working with databases. It achieves this by providing a clean data access API that returns plain JavaScript objects.

This approach enables simpler reasoning about database queries and increases the confidence with predictable (and type-safe) query results. Here are a couple of the major benefits Prisma Client provides:

• Auto-completion in code editors instead of needing to look up documentation
• Thinking in objects instead of mapping relational data
• Type-safe database queries that can be validated at compile time
• Single source of truth for database and application models
• Healthy constraints that prevent common pitfalls and antipatterns
• An abstraction that makes the right thing easy ("pit of success")
• Queries not classes to avoid complex model objects
• Less boilerplate so developers can focus on the important parts of their app

Learn more about how Prisma makes developers productive in the Introduction or get a taste of the Prisma Client API by checking out the code examples on the website.

A "smart" node module 🤓

The @prisma/client module is different from "conventional" node modules. With conventional node modules (e.g., lodash), the entire package is downloaded into your node_modules directory and only gets updated when you re-install the package.

The @prisma/client node module is different. It is a "facade package" (basically a stub) that doesn't contain any functional code.

While you do need to install it once with npm install @prisma/client, it is likely that the code inside the node_modules/@prisma/client directory changes more often as you're evolving your application. That's because whenever you make changes to the Prisma schema, you need to re-generate Prisma Client, which updates the code in the @prisma/client node module.

Because the node_modules/@prisma/client directory contains some code that is tailored to your project, it is sometimes called a "smart node module":

Auto-completion and type-safety benefits even in plain JavaScript

Auto-completion is an extremely powerful tool for developers. It allows them to explore an API directly in their editor instead of referring to documentation. Prisma Client brings auto-completion to your database queries!

Thanks to Prisma Client's generated types, which are included in the index.d.ts of the @prisma/client module, this feature is available not only to TypeScript developers, but also when developing an application in plain JavaScript.

Type-safety for partial database queries

A major benefit of Prisma Client compared to other ORMs and database tools is that it provides full type safety - even for "partial" database queries (i.e., when you query only the subset of a model's field or include a relation).

As an example, consider this Prisma Client query (you can switch the tab to view the corresponding Prisma models):

Note that the resulting usersWithPartialPosts will be statically typed to:

This means that TypeScript will catch any errors when you make a typo or accidentally access a property that was not requested from the database!

Getting started

The best way to get started with Prisma Client is by following the Quickstart in the docs:

Quickstart (5 min)

Alternatively, you can:

• Set up a new project with Prisma from scratch
• Add Prisma to an existing project

What's in this release?

The Prisma 2.0 Beta comes with the following tools:

• Prisma Client: Auto-generated, type-safe query builder for Node.js & TypeScript
• Prisma Migrate (experimental): Declarative schema migration tool
• Prisma Studio (experimental): GUI to view and edit data in your database

Try the new Prisma Client in 5 minutes by following the Quickstart in the new docs.

Note: Learn more about the Beta release in the release notes.

Renaming the prisma2 repository to prisma

Since its initial release, the main repository for Prisma 2.0 has been called prisma2.

Because Prisma 2.0 is now the default for developers getting started with Prisma, the Prisma repositories have been renamed as follows:

• The prisma/prisma2 repository has been renamed to prisma/prisma
• The prisma/prisma repository has been renamed to prisma/prisma1

Renaming the prisma2 CLI

During the Preview period, the CLI for Prisma 2.0 was invoked using the prisma2 command. With Prisma 2.0 being the default for new developers getting started with Prisma, the command is changed to just prisma. The exist ing prisma command of Prisma 1 is renamed to prisma1.

Also, note that the installation of the npm packages changes:

A note for current Prisma 1 users

If you're currently using Prisma 1 with the prisma command, you can keep using it as before. If you want to upgrade to Prisma 2.0, it is recommended to uninstall your current prisma installation and install the new CLI versions locally in the projects where they are needed:

The prisma2 npm package is deprecated

The prisma2 npm package is now deprecated. To prevent confusions during installation, it now outputs the following when you try to install it:

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I currently use Prisma 1; what should I do?

First of all, we want to hugely thank all existing Prisma 1 users! 🙏 We are deeply grateful for a supportive and active community that has formed on GitHub and Slack!

How does Prisma 2.0 compare to Prisma 1?

Prisma 2.0 comes with a number of changes compared to Prisma 1. Here's a high-level overview of the main differences:

• Prisma 2.0 doesn't require hosting a database proxy server (i.e., the Prisma server).
• Prisma 2.0 doesn't expose "a GraphQL API for your database" anymore, but only allows for programmatic access via the Prisma Client API.
• Prisma 2.0 makes the features of Prisma 1 more modular and splits them into dedicated tools:
  • Prisma Client: An improved version of Prisma client 1.0
  • Prisma Migrate: Data modeling and migrations (formerly prisma deploy).
• More powerful introspection allows connecting Prisma 2.0 to any existing database.
• Prisma 1 datamodel and prisma.yml have been merged into the Prisma schema.
• Prisma 2.0 uses its own modeling language instead of being based on GraphQL SDL.
• You can build GraphQL servers with Prisma using Nexus or any other GraphQL library of your choice.

How can I access the Prisma 1 docs?

You can keep accessing specific versions of the Prisma 1 docs by appending the version number to https://www.prisma.io/docs. For example, to view the docs for Prisma version 1.34, you can go to https://v1.prisma.io/docs/1.34/.

The Prisma 1 examples have been moved to the prisma1-examples repository.

Should I upgrade?

Whether or not you should upgrade depends on the context of your project. In general, one major consideration is the fact that Prisma Migrate is still experimental. This means you probably need to make any future adjustments to your database schema using SQL or another migration tool.

Also, note that we will put together an upgrade guide as well as dedicated tooling for the upgrade process over the next weeks. So, if you do want to upgrade despite Prisma Migrate not being ready, it might be worth waiting until these resources are in place.

Try out Prisma 2.0 and share your feedback

We are really excited to finally share the Beta version of Prisma 2.0 and can't wait to see what you all build with it.

Get started with Prisma 2.0

If you want to leave feedback, share ideas, create feature requests or submit bug reports, please do so in the (renamed) prisma repository on GitHub and join the (renamed) #prisma2-beta channel on the Prisma Slack!