Connect your database

Connecting your database

To connect your database, you need to set the url field of the datasource block in your Prisma schema to your database connection URL:

prisma/schema.prisma

datasource db {
  provider = "postgresql"
  url      = env("DATABASE_URL")
}

You will also need to set the relation mode type to prisma in the datasource block:

schema.prisma

datasource db {
  provider     = "mysql"
  url          = env("DATABASE_URL")
  relationMode = "prisma"
}

The url is set via an environment variable which is defined in .env:

.env

DATABASE_URL="mysql://janedoe:mypassword@server.us-east-2.psdb.cloud/mydb?sslaccept=strict"

You now need to adjust the connection URL to point to your own database.

Connection URL

The format of the connection URL for your database typically depends on the database you use. PlanetScale uses the MySQL connection URL format, which has the following structure (the parts spelled all-uppercased are placeholders for your specific connection details):

mysql://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/DATABASE

Here's a short explanation of each component:

USER: The name of your database user
PASSWORD: The password for your database user
PORT: The port where your database server is running (typically 3306 for MySQL)
DATABASE: The name of the database

For a database hosted with PlanetScale, the connection URL looks similar to this:

.env

DATABASE_URL="mysql://myusername:mypassword@server.us-east-2.psdb.cloud/mydb?sslaccept=strict"

The connection URL for a given database branch can be found from your PlanetScale account by going to the overview page for the branch and selecting the 'Connect' dropdown. In the 'Passwords' section, generate a new password and select 'Prisma' to get the Prisma format for the connection URL.

Alternative method: connecting using the PlanetScale CLI

Connecting your database​

Connection URL

Connecting your database