Getting started
The fastest way to get started with Prisma is by following the Quickstart (5 min).
The Quickstart is based on a preconfigured SQLite database. You can also get started with your own database (PostgreSQL and MySQL) by following one of these guides:
How Prisma works
This section provides a high-level overview of how Prisma works and its most important technical components. For a more thorough introduction, visit the Prisma documentation.
The Prisma schema
Every project that uses a tool from the Prisma toolkit starts with a Prisma schema file. The Prisma schema allows developers to define their application models in an intuitive data modeling language. It also contains the connection to a database and defines a generator:
// Data source
datasource db {
provider = "postgresql"
url = env("DATABASE_URL")
}
// Generator
generator client {
provider = "prisma-client-js"
}
// Data model
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[]
}
In this schema, you configure three things:
- Data source: Specifies your database connection (via an environment variable)
- Generator: Indicates that you want to generate Prisma Client
- Data model: Defines your application models
The Prisma data model
On this page, the focus is on the data model. You can learn more about Data sources and Generators on the respective docs pages.
Functions of Prisma models
The data model is a collection of models. A model has two major functions:
- Represent a table in the underlying database
- Provide the foundation for the queries in the Prisma Client API
Getting a data model
There are two major workflows for “getting” a data model into your Prisma schema:
- Generate the data model from introspecting a database
- Manually writing the data model and mapping it to the database with Prisma Migrate
Once the data model is defined, you can generate Prisma Client which will expose CRUD and more queries for the defined models. If you’re using TypeScript, you’ll get full type-safety for all queries (even when only retrieving the subsets of a model’s fields).
Accessing your database with Prisma Client
Using Prisma Client to send queries to your database
Once the Prisma Client is generated, you can import it in your code and send queries to your database. This is what the setup code looks like.
Import and instantiate Prisma Client
You can import and instantiate Prisma Client as follows:
import { PrismaClient } from '@prisma/client'
const prisma = new PrismaClient()
or
const { PrismaClient } = require('@prisma/client')
const prisma = new PrismaClient()
Now you can start sending queries via the generated Prisma Client API, here are a few sample queries. Note that all Prisma Client queries return plain old JavaScript objects.
Learn more about the available operations in the Prisma Client docs or watch this demo video (2 min).
Retrieve all User
records from the database
// Run inside `async` function
const allUsers = await prisma.user.findMany()
Include the posts
relation on each returned User
object
// Run inside `async` function
const allUsers = await prisma.user.findMany({
include: { posts: true },
})
Filter all Post
records that contain "prisma"
// Run inside `async` function
const filteredPosts = await prisma.post.findMany({
where: {
OR: [{ title: { contains: 'prisma' } }, { content: { contains: 'prisma' } }],
},
})
Create a new User
and a new Post
record in the same query
// Run inside `async` function
const user = await prisma.user.create({
data: {
name: 'Alice',
email: 'alice@prisma.io',
posts: {
create: { title: 'Join us for Prisma Day 2021' },
},
},
})
Update an existing Post
record
// Run inside `async` function
const post = await prisma.post.update({
where: { id: 42 },
data: { published: true },
})
Ask a question about Prisma
You can ask questions and initiate discussions about Prisma-related topics in the prisma
repository on GitHub.
Create a bug report for Prisma
If you see an error message or run into an issue, please make sure to create a bug report! You can find best practices for creating bug reports (like including additional debugging output) in the docs.
Submit a feature request
If Prisma currently doesn’t have a certain feature, be sure to check out the roadmap to see if this is already planned for the future.
If the feature on the roadmap is linked to a GitHub issue, please make sure to leave a 👍 reaction on the issue and ideally a comment with your thoughts about the feature!