Prisma is an open source next-generation ORM. It consists of the following parts:

• Prisma Client: Auto-generated and type-safe query builder for Node.js & TypeScript
• Prisma Migrate: Migration system
• Prisma Studio: GUI to view and edit data in your database

Prisma Client can be used in any Node.js (supported versions) or TypeScript backend application (including serverless applications and microservices). This can be a REST API, a GraphQL API, a gRPC API, or anything else that needs a database.

How does Prisma work?

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:

Relational databases

datasource db {
  provider = "postgresql"
  url      = env("DATABASE_URL")
}

generator client {
  provider = "prisma-client-js"
}

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[]
}

Note: The Prisma schema has powerful data modeling features. For example, it allows you to define "Prisma-level" relation fields which will make it easier to work with relations in the Prisma Client API. In the case above, the posts field on User is defined only on "Prisma-level", meaning it does not manifest as a foreign key in the underlying database.

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 relational databases or a collection in MongoDB
• 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:

• Manually writing the data model and mapping it to the database with Prisma Migrate
• Generating the data model by introspecting a database

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).