Creating a Prisma and TypegraphQL server

I’m a fan of typescript and always would like to use it for all my projects. While researching on ORMs to manage databases easily, I came across Prisma. And I am in love with it. It makes handling databases easier than anything else I have ever tried.

However, during my research process, I was unsure whether I find a Prisma Integration with TypeGraphQL, but fortunately, there exists one — which reduces your work SIGNIFICANTLY.

Trust me.

For people who are new to Prisma, you can view their docs here.

A simple introduction

Prisma is a next-generation ORM (as mentioned in their docs), that allows you to handle and work with databases using 3 main tools that Prisma provides:

1. Prisma migrate (synchronize your database with your schema)
2. Prisma client (get type-safe objects to run your database commands)
3. Prisma Studio (an app to view your database in a tabular form and also interact with it)

To generate Prisma schema, one usually creates something called as a schema.prisma file, which uses prisma syntax to outline the database provider and tables with types and relations.

Don’t worry, I learnt it in a day, and I am not even a formal SE!

Your database is referenced by the datasource “block”, following an alias for your database. Your tables are initialized by using the model “block”, yet again followed by an alias for the database table. There are other keywords, which can be found here.

I think it’s high time we get coding.

Initialization

Initialize npm/yarn (this should create a package.json file in your current working directory):

yarn init -y
# or, with npm
npm init

Installing the Prisma CLI:

yarn add -D prisma typescript

Installing the Prisma Client and TypeGraphQL generator:

yarn add @prisma/client typegraphql-prisma

Installing the server-managing libraries and dependencies:

yarn add graphql apollo-server-express express dotenv graphql-scalars graphql-fields @types/graphql-fields type-graphql class-validator reflect-metadata
yarn add -D nodemon @types/node

Initialize a tsconfig.json file:

Add these scripts to your package.json file:

The dev script is to start the server.

The mig script is to synchronize our database, with a name for the migration.

The gen script is to generate the types for the typescript generators (for @prisma/client and typegraphql-prisma)

The watch script is to generate the javascript from our typescript, to speed up testing.

Creating the schema

Usually, when using Prisma, you are supposed to create a schema.prisma file either in the root directory or in a prisma directory. We’ll be going for the second way.

Here, we have created a User model and a Profile model and also established a relation between them, using the “@relation” attribute, that takes 2 parameters: fields and references. Fields refers to the unique identifier from the current object and References refers to the unique id of the User.

Now, time to add the index.ts file to handle our server, before we build the schema.

Now, in your terminal, run:

yarn mig init

This will create our new migration, and run this against our database, along with generating typegraphql and prisma client code.

That’s it. Seriously.

The TypeGraphQL generator even creates CRUD resolvers!

Now start your server using yarn dev and play in the GraphQL Playground.

If you have any problems, feel free to contact me.

Thank you for reading this article!