Overview

In this guide, you will set up and deploy a serverless Node.js application to Netlify. The application will expose a REST API and use Prisma Client to handle fetching, creating, and deleting records from a database.

Netlify is a cloud platform for continuous deployment, static sites, and serverless functions. Netlify integrates seamlessly with GitHub for automatic deployments upon commits. In this guide, you will use this approach to create a CI/CD pipeline that deploys your application from a GitHub repository.

The application has the following components:

• Backend: Serverless Node.js REST API with resource endpoints that use Prisma Client to handle database operations against a PostgreSQL database (e.g. hosted on Heroku).
• Frontend: Static HTML page to interact with the API.

The focus of this guide is showing how Prisma integrates with Netlify. The starting point will the Prisma Netlify example which has a couple of REST endpoints preconfigured as serverless functions and a static HTML page.

With Netlify, the fundamental building block is a Site. Sites are typically connected to a Git repository and have a publicly accessible URL that looks like https://site-name.netlify.com. In this guide, you will connect a Github repository to a Netlify site.

Throughout the guide you'll find various checkpoints that enable you to validate whether you performed the steps correctly.

Prerequisites

• Github account
• Hosted PostgreSQL database and a URL from which it can be accessed, e.g. postgresql://username:password@your_postgres_db.cloud.com/db_identifier (you can use Heroku, which offers a free plan).
• Netlify account connected to your Github account (Netlify will need access to the repository you will create as part of this guide).
• Netlify CLI installed.
• Node.js installed.
• PostgreSQL CLI psql installed.

Prisma workflow

Prisma supports different workflows depending on whether you integrate with an existing database or create a new one from scratch. Regardless of the workflow, Prisma relies on the Prisma schema, i.e. schema.prisma file.

This guide starts with an empty database created with plain SQL and looks as follows:

1. Define the database schema using SQL.
2. Run prisma introspect locally which will introspect and populate the schema.prisma with models based on the database schema.
3. Run prisma generate which will generate Prisma Client based on the Prisma schema.

1. Fork the deployment-example-netlify repository

Go to deployment-example-netlify and Fork the repository by clicking on the fork button on the top right corner:

By forking, you create a copy of the repository to which you will be able to commit your changes. Later in the guide, you will connect the forked repository to Netlify so that changes are automatically built and deployed.

Checkpoint: After cloning you should see the forked repository in your account, i.e. https://github.com/YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/deployment-example-netlify

2. Clone the fork and install dependencies

Open your terminal, navigate to a location of your choice and clone your fork of the deployment-example-netlify:

git clone git@github.com:YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/deployment-example-netlify.git

After cloning the repository, install the dependencies:

cd deployment-example-netlify
npm install

Checkpoint: ls -1 should show:

ls -1
README.md
functions
netlify.toml
node_modules
package.json
prisma
public
schema.sql

3. Set the DATABASE_URL environment variable locally

Set the DATABASE_URL environment variable locally so you can create the database schema and Prisma can access the database to introspect:

export DATABASE_URL="postgresql://__USER__:__PASSWORD__@__HOST__/__DATABASE__"

Note: you will need the DATABASE_URL environment variable for the subsequent steps. Set it in all terminal sessions related to this project.

You need to replace the uppercase placeholders with your database credentials, e.g.:

postgresql://janedoe:randompassword@yourpostgres.compute-1.amazonaws.com:5432/yourdbname

4. Create the database schema

To create your database schema, run the schema.sql from the example code as follows:

psql $DATABASE_URL -f schema.sql

Checkpoint: psql $DATABASE_URL -c "\dt" should show the list of tables:

      List of relations
Schema |  Name   | Type  |     Owner
--------+---------+-------+----------------
public | Post    | table | janedoe
public | Profile | table | janedoe
public | User    | table | janedoe

Congratulations, you have successfully created the database schema.

5. Introspect the database

Introspect the database with the Prisma CLI:

npx prisma introspect

Prisma will introspect the database defined in the datasource block of the Prisma schema and populate the Prisma schema with models corresponding to the database tables.

Checkpoint: Open prisma/schema.prisma and ensure there are three models: Post, Profile, and User.

6. Commit the Prisma schema to the repository

The result of prisma introspect is the schema.prisma Prisma schema file.

Since the Prisma schema is used to generate Prisma Client, commit it to your repository so that Prisma Client can be generated when Netlify builds the project:

git commit prisma/schema.prisma -m 'Add Prisma schema'

7. Netlify login

Make sure you're logged in to Netlify with the CLI:

netlify login

This will allow you to create a Netlify site and connect it to a repository from the terminal.

Checkpoint: netlify status should show your username:

netlify status
──────────────────────┐
 Current Netlify User │
──────────────────────┘
Name: your name
Email: your@email.com
Teams:
  ....

8. Configure continuous deployment to Netlify

From the repository's folder, run netlify init to configure a new Netlify site:

You will be prompted with configuration options:

1. Select Create & configure a new site
2. If prompted to select your team, pick the one in which Netlify will create the site
3. Give the site a unique name
4. Your build command: npm run build
5. Directory to deploy: public

Checkpoint: The Netlify CLI should output the following:

Site Created
Admin URL: https://app.netlify.com/sites/YOUR_SITE_NAME
URL:       https://YOUR_SITE_NAME.netlify.com

Note: You can change the build configuration via the netlify.toml file and the site name from the Netlify admin UI.

9. Expose the DATABASE_URL environment variable to functions

Since Prisma will connect to the database from your serverless functions, you need to expose the DATABASE_URL to the backend functions. This is typically done from the Netlify UI. To do, open the Netlify admin UI for the site. You can do so directly with the Netlify CLI as follows:

netlify open --admin

Once open, go to Site settings:

Navigate to Build & deploy in the sidebar on the left and then select Environment:

Create a variable with the key DATABASE_URL and set the value with your PostgresSQL URL.

Note: It's considered best practice to keep secrets out of your codebase. If you open up the prisma/schema.prisma file, you should see env("DATABASE_URL") in the datasource block. By setting an environment variable you keep secrets out of the codebase.

10. Deploy the app

Your project is now ready for deployment

You can now use git push to push the commit with the Prisma schema. This will trigger a netlify build.

Checkpoint: Call the API status endpoint:

curl https://YOUR_SITE_NAME.netlify.com/.netlify/functions/status

The call should return: {"up":true}

11. Test your deployed application

Open the site from the command line:

netlify open:site

This will open the static frontend that you deployed. The URL should like this: https://YOUR_SITE_NAME.netlify.com.

The four buttons allow you to make requests to the REST API and view the response:

• Check API status: Will call the REST API status endpoint that returns {"up":true}. The implementation code is in functions/index.js
• Seed data: Will delete all database records and load the database with test data users, profiles, and posts. Returns the created users. The implementation code is in functions/seed.js
• Load users with profiles: Will load all users in the database with their related profiles. The implementation code is in functions/getUsers.js
• Load Posts: Will load posts and their related authors. The implementation code is in functions/getPosts.js

For example, calling seed data should show the following:

Notes

The netlify.toml file defines a build time environment variable called ZISI_VERSION. This sets a specific version of zip-it-and-ship-it which fixes a bug related to the way Prisma loads its dependencies.

Summary

Congratulations! You have successfully deployed the application to Netlify.

For more insight into Prisma Client's API, look at the function handlers in the functions/ folder.

Generally, when using a FaaS (function as a service) environment to interact with a database, it's beneficial to pool DB connections for performance reasons. This is because every function invocation may result in a new connection to the database (this is not a problem with a constantly running node.js server). For more information on some of the solutions, you may want to look at our general FaaS guide.