How to use Prisma Postgres 🚀

October 31, 2024

This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Thomas Bnt

Introduction

On October 29, Prisma announced Prisma Postgres. Don’t hesitate to read the blog, useful information!

It is built from the ground up and deployed via unikernels (think: hyper-specialized OS) that are running as ultra-lightweight microVMs on our own bare metal servers.

Thanks to that architecture, we’re able to offer unique benefits that you don’t get anywhere else:

A “serverless” database with pay-as-you-go pricing but no cold starts.

A generous free tier that you can use to explore the service and build small projects.

Thanks to the first-class integration with other Prisma products, you also get the following features out-of-the-box:

Real-time database event streams

Connection pooling

Caching

Query analysis and recommendations

Quick video presentation

How to use Prisma Postgres

Getting started: Get a new database

If you want, you have the Quickstart documentation about installing Prisma.

Login into your Prisma Console account (it’s free)
Create a new project by clicking on the New project button
Give it a beautiful name
In the Prisma Postgres section, click to Get started
Select a region, and click to Create project
You now have your database !

Setup your project

Open your terminal

Execute this command if you want a template

npx try-prisma@latest --template databases/prisma-postgres --name hello-prisma --install npm

Install dependencies

thomasbnt@thomasbnt:~/lab$ npx try-prisma@latest --template databases/prisma-postgres --name beautiful-project --install npm
Need to install the following packages:
try-prisma@1.0.58
Ok to proceed? (y) y
✔ Loaded 59 templates
✔ Downloaded and extracted the databases/prisma-postgres project in ./beautiful-project.
✔ Installed packages in ./beautiful-project.
The project is good to go! Next steps:
1. Navigate into ./beautiful-project to begin.
2. Refer to the project README for detailed instructions on running the project:
https://github.com/prisma/prisma-examples/tree/latest/databases/prisma-postgres
If you have any feedback about this specific template, we want to hear it!
Submit any feedback here: https://pris.ly/prisma-examples-feedback
thomasbnt@thomasbnt:~/lab$ cd beautiful-project/

Click on Generate database credentials and copying and pasting into your .env file in your project folder, but keep it private!
You can setup your database with a migration
```
npx prisma migrate dev --name init
```
Output:
Optional: If you want sample data: npm run queries
You can now see your database with the npx prisma studio