 Resources from Ryan Chenkie in 2024

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

- Prisma Client: Auto-generated and type-safe query builder
- Prisma Migrate: Migration system
- Prisma Studio: GUI to view and edit data in your database

Prisma Client can be used in any Node.js 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.

In this course, you will learn how to initialize Prisma in a TypeScript Node project, use Prisma Client to create and find records, use Express to create data dynamically, and more! 



Prisma is a next-generation open-source ORM For Node.js and TypeScript that helps developers build faster and make fewer errors.

It supports the following databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, SQLite, and more recently, MongoDB (Preview).

Prisma provides a complete toolkit:

- Prisma Client: Auto-generated and type-safe database client
- Prisma Migrate: Declarative data modeling and customizable migrations
- Prisma Studio: Modern UI to view and edit data


prisma

Build a Backend with Prisma in a TypeScript Node Project

JavaScript® (often shortened to JS) is a lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions, most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic, and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

javascript

With GraphQL, you can easily avoid over-fetching from the client. It's harder to prevent over-fetching from your database. Learn how to use the GraphQL info argument to avoid over-fetching data on your server.

Prevent GraphQL Queries from Over-fetching from the Database

Apollo provides a universal GraphQL API on top of your existing services, so you can build new application features fast without waiting on backend changes.

apollo

GraphQL resolvers are nested. Data resolved out of a parent resolver can be accessed by a child resolver. This is useful when you need to resolve data from multiple sources.

Use the GraphQL Parent Object in a Child Resolver

The second argument in a GraphQL resolver is an object containing any arguments passed in from the client. These arguments can be used to pass data to the resolver to be persisted to the datastore. This lesson demonstrates how to pass arguments from a GraphQL mutation on the client to a resolver on the server and how to operate on those arguments on the server.

Use Arguments in a GraphQL Mutation

GraphQL resolvers have an argument called "context" which is shared between resolvers and can be used to store authorization information, database connection information, and more. Learn how to use the context argument to get authorization information from a JSON Web Token. Use the authorization information to scope the data sent back in the resolver to that which belongs to the requesting user.

Use the GraphQL Context Argument to Get Authorization Information

Prisma Client allows us to limit the amount of data that is returned from queries. It also allows us to be specific about which data should be included in the returned dataset. In this lesson, we use the select and include operators to be specific about the shape of our returned data.

Limit the Amount of Returned Data with Prisma Client

Prisma Client has a specific API for relating data from one table to another when creating new records. In this lesson, we use the connect operator to establish a link between two tables as new records are created.

Use Prisma Client to Connect Related Tables when Creating New Data

When two tables are related to one another, we can use Prisma Client to query for data through those relations. In this lesson, we see how to use Prisma Client to tie together data from two separate tables and pull it out in a nested fashion.

Use Prisma Client to Query for Related Data

Prisma Schema Language is used to model our database tables and establish relations between them. Prisma offers autocompletion to register the relations. In this lesson, we create a new model for a second database table and see how to relate our two tables together.

Create a Relation Between Two Tables in the Prisma Schema

Prisma is API-agnostic meaning that it doesn't matter how we build our APIs. They can be REST APIs, GraphQL APIs, or anything else. In this lesson, we see how to use express to accept JSON data to be forwarded off to Prisma to create new records in the database.

Use Express to Create Data Dynamically

Prisma Client offers methods to create new database records. These methods accept a data object and return the result to be consumed by clients. In this lesson, we use Prisma Client's create method to create new records in the database.

Create a Database Record with Prisma Client

Prisma Client has a full API for selecting subsets of data in our tables. We can use the WHERE clause to match specific conditions for which we would like to return data. In this lesson, we look at how to use the WHERE and its operators to return a subset of data.

Use Prima Client to Select a Subset of Data

Prisma Client is a fully type-safe database access client that is automatically generated based on our Prisma Schema files. In this lesson, we use Prisma Client to access records in our database programmatically. We show how to return the data from an endpoint built with express.

Use Prisma Client to Find Many Records in a Table

Prisma Studio is a GUI for viewing and interacting with our databases. In this lesson, we view our database with Prisma Studio and use it to create our first record.

Use Prisma Studio to Create a Record

Prisma offers a powerful database modeling language called the Prisma Schema Language. It allows us to describe the shape of our tables, the columns they should have (and their types), and relations between tables. In this lesson, we get started with our first table in our Prisma Schema file.

Create a Model for a Table and Run Migrations

The Prisma CLI comes with commands to initialize Prisma in a project, run migrations, generate Prisma Client and more. In this lesson, we install the relevant dependencies and initialize Prisma in a TypeScript Node project.

Initialize Prisma in a TypeScript Node Project

Prisma offers an extension for VS Code that enables syntax highlighting, autocompletion, and more for Prisma Schema files. In this lesson, we learn how to install the Prisma VS Code extension.

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Ryan Chenkie