REST (Prisma ORM v6) (/docs/orm/v6/overview/prisma-in-your-stack/rest)

For the complete Prisma documentation index, see llms.txt. A markdown version of any docs page is available by appending .md to its URL.

This page gives an overview of the most important things when building REST APIs with Prisma. It shows practical examples and the supported libraries.

Location: ORM > v6 > Core Concepts > Prisma in Your Stack > REST

When building REST APIs, Prisma Client can be used inside your route controllers to send databases queries.

As Prisma Client is "only" responsible for sending queries to your database, it can be combined with any HTTP server library or web framework of your choice.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of libraries and frameworks you can use with Prisma ORM:

• Express
• koa
• hapi
• Fastify
• Sails
• AdonisJs
• NestJS
• Next.js
• Foal TS
• Polka
• Micro
• Feathers
• Remix

Assume you have a Prisma schema that looks similar to this:

datasource db {
  provider = "sqlite"
  url      = "file:./dev.db"
}

generator client {
  provider = "prisma-client"
  output   = "./generated"
}

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[]
}

You can now implement route controller (e.g. using Express) that use the generated Prisma Client API to perform a database operation when an incoming HTTP request arrives. This page only shows few sample code snippets; if you want to run these code snippets, you can use a REST API example.

app.get("/feed", async (req, res) => {
  const posts = await prisma.post.findMany({
    where: { published: true },
    include: { author: true },
  });
  res.json(posts);
});

Note that the feed endpoint in this case returns a nested JSON response of Post objects that include an author object. Here's a sample response:

[
  {
    "id": "21",
    "title": "Hello World",
    "content": "null",
    "published": "true",
    "authorId": 42,
    "author": {
      "id": "42",
      "name": "Alice",
      "email": "alice@prisma.io"
    }
  }
]

app.post(`/post`, async (req, res) => {
  const { title, content, authorEmail } = req.body;
  const result = await prisma.post.create({
    data: {
      title,
      content,
      published: false,
      author: { connect: { email: authorEmail } },
    },
  });
  res.json(result);
});

app.put("/publish/:id", async (req, res) => {
  const { id } = req.params;
  const post = await prisma.post.update({
    where: { id: Number(id) },
    data: { published: true },
  });
  res.json(post);
});

app.delete(`/post/:id`, async (req, res) => {
  const { id } = req.params;
  const post = await prisma.post.delete({
    where: {
      id: Number(id),
    },
  });
  res.json(post);
});

You can find several ready-to-run examples that show how to implement a REST API with Prisma Client, as well as build full applications, in the prisma-examples repository.

• Fullstack: This page gives explains how to build fullstack applications with Prisma. It shows how Prisma fits in with fullstack frameworks and provides practical examples
• GraphQL: This page gives explains how to build GraphQL servers with Prisma ORM. It shows how Prisma ORM fits into the GraphQL ecosystem and provides practical examples.
• Is Prisma ORM an ORM?: Learn about how Prisma ORM implements the Data Mapper ORM pattern and how it achieves the same goal as traditional ORMs without requiring you to map classes to tables as traditional ORMs do.