Start from scratch

• Node.js installed on your machine
• a PostgreSQL database server running

• Node.js installed on your machine
• a MySQL database server running

Next, initialize a TypeScript project and add the Prisma CLI as a development dependency to it:

$npm init -y
$npm install prisma typescript ts-node @types/node --save-dev

This creates a package.json with an initial setup for your TypeScript app.

Next, create a tsconfig.json file and add the following configuration to it:

tsconfig.json
1{
2  "compilerOptions": {
3    "sourceMap": true,
4    "outDir": "dist",
5    "strict": true,
6    "lib": ["esnext"],
7    "esModuleInterop": true
8  }
9}

Next, initialize a Node.js project and add the Prisma CLI as a development dependency to it:

$npm init -y
$npm install prisma --save-dev

This creates a package.json with an initial setup for a Node.js app.

prisma/schema.prisma
1datasource db {
2  provider = "postgresql"
3  url      = env("DATABASE_URL")
4}

In this case, the url is set via an environment variable which is defined in .env:

.env
1DATABASE_URL = 'postgresql://johndoe:randompassword@localhost:5432/mydb?schema=public'

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

The format of the connection URL for your database depends on the database you use. For PostgreSQL, it looks as follows (the parts spelled all-uppercased are placeholders for your specific connection details):

postgresql://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/DATABASE?schema=SCHEMA

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 5432 for PostgreSQL)
• DATABASE: The name of the database
• SCHEMA: The name of the schema inside the database

If you're unsure what to provide for the schema parameter for a PostgreSQL connection URL, you can probably omit it. In that case, the default schema name public will be used.

As an example, for a PostgreSQL database hosted on Heroku, the connection URL might look similar to this:

.env
1DATABASE_URL =
2  'postgresql://opnmyfngbknppm:XXX@ec2-46-137-91-216.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com:5432/d50rgmkqi2ipus?schema=hello-prisma'

When running PostgreSQL locally on Mac OS, your user and password as well as the database name typically correspond to the current user of your OS, e.g. assuming the user is called janedoe:

.env
1DATABASE_URL = 'postgresql://janedoe:janedoe@localhost:5432/janedoe?schema=hello-prisma'

prisma/schema.prisma
1datasource db {
2  provider = "postgresql"
3  url      = env("DATABASE_URL")
4}

Note that the default schema created by prisma init uses PostgreSQL, so you first need to switch the provider to mysql:

prisma/schema.prisma
1datasource db {
✎  provider = "mysql"
3  url      = env("DATABASE_URL")
4}

In this case, the url is set via an environment variable which is defined in .env:

.env
1DATABASE_URL = 'mysql://johndoe:randompassword@localhost:3306/mydb'

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

The format of the connection URL for your database typically depends on the database you use. For MySQL, it looks as follows (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

As an example, for a MySQL database hosted on AWS RDS, the connection URL might look similar to this:

.env
1DATABASE_URL =
2  'mysql://johndoe:XXX@mysql–instance1.123456789012.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com:3306/mydb'

When running MySQL locally, your connection URL typically looks similar to this:

.env
1DATABASE_URL = 'mysql://root:randompassword@localhost:3306/mydb'

Create a new file called index.ts and add the following code to it:

index.ts
1import { PrismaClient } from '@prisma/client'
2
3const prisma = new PrismaClient()
4
5async function main() {
6  // ... you will write your Prisma Client queries here
7}
8
9main()
10  .catch((e) => {
11    throw e
12  })
13  .finally(async () => {
14    await prisma.$disconnect()
15  })

Create a new file called index.js and add the following code to it:

index.js
1const { PrismaClient } = require('@prisma/client')
2
3const prisma = new PrismaClient()
4
5async function main() {
6  // ... you will write your Prisma Client queries here
7}
8
9main()
10  .catch((e) => {
11    throw e
12  })
13  .finally(async () => {
14    await prisma.$disconnect()
15  })

index.ts
1async function main() {
2   // ... you will write your Prisma Client queries here
+  const allUsers = await prisma.user.findMany()
+  console.log(allUsers)
5}

index.js
1async function main() {
-  // ... you will write your Prisma Client queries here
+  const allUsers = await prisma.user.findMany()
+  console.log(allUsers)
5}

$npx ts-node index.ts

$node index.js

index.ts
1async function main() {
2  await prisma.user.create({
3    data: {
4      name: 'Alice',
5      email: 'alice@prisma.io',
6      posts: {
7        create: { title: 'Hello World' },
8      },
9      profile: {
10        create: { bio: 'I like turtles' },
11      },
12    },
13  })
14
15  const allUsers = await prisma.user.findMany({
16    include: {
17      posts: true,
18      profile: true,
19    },
20  })
21  console.dir(allUsers, { depth: null })
22}

index.js
1async function main() {
2  await prisma.user.create({
3    data: {
4      name: 'Alice',
5      email: 'alice@prisma.io',
6      posts: {
7        create: { title: 'Hello World' },
8      },
9      profile: {
10        create: { bio: 'I like turtles' },
11      },
12    },
13  })
14
15  const allUsers = await prisma.user.findMany({
16    include: {
17      posts: true,
18      profile: true,
19    },
20  })
21  console.dir(allUsers, { depth: null })
22}

$npx ts-node index.ts

$node index.js

Also note that allUsers is statically typed thanks to Prisma Client's generated types. You can observe the type by hovering over the allUsers variable in your editor. It should be typed as follows:

const allUsers: (User & {
  posts: Post[]
})[]

export type Post = {
  id: number
  title: string
  content: string | null
  published: boolean
  authorId: number | null
}

index.ts
1async function main() {
2  const post = await prisma.post.update({
3    where: { id: 1 },
4    data: { published: true },
5  })
6  console.log(post)
7}

index.js
1async function main() {
2  const post = await prisma.post.update({
3    where: { id: 1 },
4    data: { published: true },
5  })
6  console.log(post)
7}

Now run the code using the same command as before:

$npx ts-node index.ts

Now run the code using the same command as before:

$node index.js