REST

When building REST APIs, Prisma Client can be used inside your route controllers to send databases queries.

Supported libraries

As Prisma Client is "only" responsible for sending queries to your database, it can be combined with any HTTP server library or web framework of your choice.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of libraries and frameworks you can use with Prisma ORM:

• Express
• koa
• hapi
• Fastify
• Sails
• AdonisJs
• NestJS
• Next.js
• Foal TS
• Polka
• Micro
• Feathers
• Remix

REST API server example

Assume you have a Prisma schema that looks similar to this:

datasource db {
  provider = "sqlite"
  url      = "file:./dev.db"
}

generator client {
  provider = "prisma-client-js"
}

model Post {
  id        Int     @id @default(autoincrement())
  title     String
  content   String?
  published Boolean @default(false)
  author    User?   @relation(fields: [authorId], references: [id])
  authorId  Int?
}

model User {
  id    Int     @id @default(autoincrement())
  email String  @unique
  name  String?
  posts Post[]
}

You can now implement route controller (e.g. using Express) that use the generated Prisma Client API to perform a database operation when an incoming HTTP request arrives. This page only shows few sample code snippets; if you want to run these code snippets, you can use a REST API example.

GET

app.get('/feed', async (req, res) => {
  const posts = await prisma.post.findMany({
    where: { published: true },
    include: { author: true },
  })
  res.json(posts)
})

Note that the feed endpoint in this case returns a nested JSON response of Post objects that include an author object. Here's a sample response:

[
  {
    "id": "21",
    "title": "Hello World",
    "content": "null",
    "published": "true",
    "authorId": 42,
    "author": {
      "id": "42",
      "name": "Alice",
      "email": "alice@prisma.io"
    }
  }
]

POST

app.post(`/post`, async (req, res) => {
  const { title, content, authorEmail } = req.body
  const result = await prisma.post.create({
    data: {
      title,
      content,
      published: false,
      author: { connect: { email: authorEmail } },
    },
  })
  res.json(result)
})

PUT

app.put('/publish/:id', async (req, res) => {
  const { id } = req.params
  const post = await prisma.post.update({
    where: { id: Number(id) },
    data: { published: true },
  })
  res.json(post)
})

DELETE

app.delete(`/post/:id`, async (req, res) => {
  const { id } = req.params
  const post = await prisma.post.delete({
    where: {
      id: Number(id),
    },
  })
  res.json(post)
})

Ready-to-run example projects

You can find several ready-to-run examples that show how to implement a REST API with Prisma Client, as well as build full applications, in the prisma-examples repository.

Example	Stack	Description
express	Backend only	REST API with Express for TypeScript
fastify	Backend only	REST API using Fastify and Prisma Client.
hapi	Backend only	REST API using hapi and Prisma Client
nestjs	Backend only	Nest.js app (Express) with a REST API
nextjs-api-routes	Fullstack	Next.js app (React) with a REST API