Set up Prisma

Goals

On this page, you will learn how to:

• Install the Prisma CLI
• Set up Prisma using Docker
• Configure your Prisma API
• Generate the Prisma client
• Read and write data using the Prisma client

Install the Prisma CLI

The Prisma CLI is used for various Prisma workflows. You can install it using Homebrew or NPM:

brew tap prisma/prisma
brew install prisma
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Install Docker

To use Prisma locally, you need to have Docker installed on your machine. If you don't have Docker yet, you can download the Docker Community Edition for your operating system here.

Don't want to use Docker? Check out the new Prisma 2 which removes the need to host the Prisma server using Docker.

Set up and connect Prisma with a database

Create new directory

mkdir hello-world
cd hello-world
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Create Docker Compose file

To launch Prisma on your machine, you need a Docker Compose file that configures Prisma and specifies the database it can connect to.

touch docker-compose.yml
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Add Prisma and database Docker images

Paste the following contents into the Docker Compose file you just created:

version: '3'
services:
  prisma:
    image: prismagraphql/prisma:1.34
    restart: always
    ports:
      - '4466:4466'
    environment:
      PRISMA_CONFIG: |
        port: 4466
        databases:
          default:
            connector: mysql
            host: mysql
            port: 3306
            user: root
            password: prisma
  mysql:
    image: mysql:5.7
    restart: always
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: prisma
    volumes:
      - mysql:/var/lib/mysql
volumes:
  mysql: ~
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You can switch between MySQL, PostgreSQL and MongoDB by using the tabs above the code block.

Launch Prisma and the connected database

To start Prisma and launch the connected database, run the following command:

docker-compose up -d
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Prisma is now connected to a local database and runs on http://localhost:4466.

Configure your Prisma API

To bootstrap the configuration files for your Prisma client run the following command:

prisma1 init --endpoint http://localhost:4466
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The endpoint needs to match the URL of a running Prisma server.

Deploy the Prisma datamodel

The prisma1 init command created the minimal setup needed to deploy the Prisma datamodel: prisma.yml and datamodel.prisma.

endpoint: http://localhost:4466
datamodel: datamodel.prisma
databaseType: document
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type User {
  id: ID! @id
  name: String!
}

With these configuration files, you can now deploy the Prisma API:

prisma1 deploy
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Congratulations, you have successfully set up Prisma. You can now start using the Prisma client to talk to your database from code.

View and edit your data in Prisma Admin

If you want to view and edit the data in your database, you can use Prisma Admin. To access Prisma Admin, you need to append /_admin to your Prisma endpoint, for example: http://localhost:4466/_admin.

Generate your Prisma client

The Prisma client is a custom, auto-generated library that connects to your Prisma API. Append the following lines to the end of your prisma.yml:

generate:
  - generator: typescript-client
    output: ./generated/prisma-client/
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Now generate the client with this command:

prisma1 generate
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The CLI now stored your Prisma client inside the ./generated/prisma-client/ directory as specified in prisma.yml.

Prepare TypeScript application

Create your tsconfig.json with the following command:

touch tsconfig.json
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Add the following configuration to the tsconfig.json file:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "lib": ["es2016", "esnext.asynciterable"]
  }
}
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Next, initialize an empty NPM project in the current directory and install the required dependencies:

npm init -y
npm install --save prisma-client-lib
npm install --save-dev typescript ts-node
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Almost done! Run the following command to create an empty TypeScript script:

touch index.ts
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Great, you're now ready to write some code and talk to your database programmatically!

Read and write data using the Prisma client

Add the following code in index.ts :

import { prisma } from './generated/prisma-client'

// A `main` function so that we can use async/await
async function main() {
  // Create a new user called `Alice`
  const newUser = await prisma.createUser({ name: 'Alice' })
  console.log(`Created new user: ${newUser.name} (ID: ${newUser.id})`)

  // Read all users from the database and print them to the console
  const allUsers = await prisma.users()
  console.log(allUsers)
}

main().catch(e => console.error(e))
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Before executing the code, go ahead and add a start script to package.json so you can comfortably run the code:

{
  "name": "hello-world",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
    "start": "ts-node index.ts"
  },
  "keywords": [],
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "graphql": "^14.0.2",
    "prisma-client-lib": "^1.20.0"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "ts-node": "^7.0.1",
    "typescript": "^3.1.6"
  }
}
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Now execute the script with the following command:

npm run start
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Whenever you run the script with that command, a new user record is created in the database (because of the call to createUser).

Feel free to play around with the Prisma client API and try out some of the following operations by adding the following code snippets to the file (at the end of the main function) and re-executing the script:

const user = await prisma.user({ id: '__USER_ID__' })
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In some snippets, you need to replace the __USER__ID__ placeholder with the ID of an actual user.