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Quickstart

Prisma Postgres

In this Quickstart guide, you'll learn how to get started from scratch with Prisma ORM and a Prisma Postgres database in a plain TypeScript project. It covers the following workflows:

Prerequisites​

To successfully complete this tutorial, you need:

1. Set up a Prisma Postgres database in the Platform Console​

Follow these steps to create your Prisma Postgres database:

  1. Log in to and open the Console.
  2. In a workspace of your choice, click the New project button.
  3. Type a name for your project in the Name field, e.g. hello-ppg.
  4. In the Prisma Postgres section, click the Get started button.
  5. In the Region dropdown, select the region that's closest to your current location, e.g. US East (N. Virginia).
  6. Click the Create project button.

At this point, you'll be redirected to the Database page where you will need to wait for a few seconds while the status of your database changes from PROVISIONING to CONNECTED.

Once the green CONNECTED label appears, your database is ready to use!

2. Download example and install dependencies​

Copy the try-prisma command that's shown in the Console, paste it into your terminal and execute it.

For reference, this is what the command looks like:

npx try-prisma@latest \
  --template databases/prisma-postgres \
  --name hello-prisma \
  --install npm

Once the try-prisma command has terminated, navigate into the project directory:

cd hello-prisma

3. Set database connection URL​

The connection to your database and the Pulse API key are configured via environment variables in a .env file.

First, rename the existing .env.example file to just .env:

mv .env.example .env

Then, in your project environment in the Platform console, find your database credentials in the Set up database access section, copy the DATABASE_URL environment variable and paste them into the .env file.

For reference, the file should now look similar to this:

DATABASE_URL="prisma+postgres://accelerate.prisma-data.net/?api_key=ey...."
PULSE_API_KEY=""

Don't worry about the PULSE_API_KEY environment variable yet, you'll set it later.

4. Create database tables (with a schema migration)​

Next, you need to create the tables in your database. You can do this by creating and executing a schema migration with the following command of the Prisma CLI:

npx prisma migrate dev --name init

This will map the User and Post models that are defined in your Prisma schema to your database. You can also review the SQL migration that was executed and created the tables in the newly created prisma/migrations directory.

5. Execute queries with Prisma ORM​

The src/queries.ts script contains a number of CRUD queries that will write and read data in your database. You can execute it by running the following command in your terminal:

npm run queries

Once the script has completed, you can inspect the logs in your terminal or use Prisma Studio to explore what records have been created in the database:

npx prisma studio

6. Explore caching with Prisma Accelerate​

The src/caching.ts script contains a sample query that uses Stale-While-Revalidate (SWR) and Time-To-Live (TTL) to cache a database query using Prisma Accelerate. You can execute it as follows:

npm run caching

Take note of the time that it took to execute the query, e.g.:

The query took 2009.2467149999998ms.

Now, run the script again:

npm run caching

You'll notice that the time the query took will be a lot shorter this time, e.g.:

The query took 300.5655280000001ms.

7. Observe real-time events in your database with Prisma Pulse​

The src/realtime.ts script contains a demo for receiving real-time change events from your database via Prisma Pulse.

Before you can run it, you need to enable the real-time capabilities of Prisma Postgres in the Console:

  1. Re-open your project in the .
  2. Select the Pulse tab in the sidenav.
  3. Find and click the Enable Pulse button.
  4. In the section Add Pulse to your application, click the Generate API key button.
  5. Copy the PULSE_API_KEY environment variable and paste it into your .env file.

For reference, your .env file should now look similar to this:

DATABASE_URL="prisma+postgres://accelerate.prisma-data.net/?api_key=ey...."
PULSE_API_KEY="ey..."

You can now start the script as follows:

npm run realtime

The script now created a stream that will receive database events and print them to the console whenever a write-operation (i.e. create, update or delete) happens on the User table.

To test the stream, you can open Prisma Studio:

npx prisma studio

... and make a change to the User table, e.g. create a new record. Once you've saved the change, you should see an output in the terminal that looks similar to this:

Received an event: {
  action: 'create',
  created: { id: 3, email: 'burk@prisma.io', name: 'Nikolas' },
  id: '01JAFNSZHQRDTW773BCAA9G7FJ'
}

8. Next steps​

In this Quickstart guide, you have learned how to get started with Prisma ORM in a plain TypeScript project. Feel free to explore the Prisma Client API a bit more on your own, e.g. by including filtering, sorting, and pagination options in the findMany query or exploring more operations like update and delete queries.

Explore the data in Prisma Studio​

Prisma ORM comes with a built-in GUI to view and edit the data in your database. You can open it using the following command:

npx prisma studio

With Prisma Postgres, you can also directly use Prisma Studio inside the by selecting the Studio tab in your project.

Build a fullstack app with Next.js​

Learn how to use Prisma Postgres in a fullstack app:

Explore ready-to-run Prisma ORM examples​

Check out the prisma-examples repository on GitHub to see how Prisma ORM can be used with your favorite library. The repo contains examples with Express, NestJS, GraphQL as well as fullstack examples with Next.js and Vue.js, and a lot more.

These examples use SQLite by default but you can follow the instructions in the project README to switch to Prisma Postgres in a few simple steps.s

Join the Prisma community 💚​

Prisma has a huge community of developers. Join us on Discord or ask questions using GitHub Discussions.