Switch to Drizzle

Drizzle is a brilliant, type-safe ORM growing quickly in popularity. If you want to switch to Drizzle, you have two options:

Keep Prisma and add the Drizzle API to the Prisma client. Drizzle have a great guide on how to do this.
Go all-in and switch to Drizzle.

Here, we’ll assume you have a working Neon database and cover the second option.

1. Swap out the required dependencies in `@repo/database`

Uninstall the existing dependencies…

Terminal

pnpm remove @prisma/adapter-neon @prisma/client prisma --filter @repo/database

…and install the new ones:

Terminal

pnpm add drizzle-orm --filter @repo/database
pnpm add -D drizzle-kit --filter @repo/database

2. Update the database connection code

Delete everything in @repo/database/index.ts and replace it with the following:

packages/database/index.ts

import 'server-only';

import { drizzle } from 'drizzle-orm/neon-http';
import { neon } from '@neondatabase/serverless';
import { env } from '@repo/env';

const client = neon(env.DATABASE_URL);

export const database = drizzle({ client });

3. Create a `drizzle.config.ts` file

Next we’ll create a Drizzle configuration file, used by Drizzle Kit and contains all the information about your database connection, migration folder and schema files. Create a drizzle.config.ts file in the packages/database directory with the following contents:

packages/database/drizzle.config.ts

import { defineConfig } from 'drizzle-kit';
import { env } from '@repo/env';

export default defineConfig({
  schema: './schema.ts',
  out: './',
  dialect: 'postgresql',
  dbCredentials: {
    url: env.DATABASE_URL,
  },
});

4. Generate the schema file

Drizzle uses a schema file to define your database tables. Rather than create one from scratch, we can generate it from the existing database. In the packages/database folder, run the following command to generate the schema file:

npx drizzle-kit pull

This should pull the schema from the database, creating a schema.ts file containing the table definitions and some other files.

5. Update your queries

Now you can update your queries to use the Drizzle ORM. For example, here’s how we can update the page query in app/(authenticated)/page.tsx:

apps/app/app/(authenticated)/page.tsx

import { database } from '@repo/database';
import { page } from '@repo/database/schema';

// ...

const App = async () => {
  const pages = await database.select().from(page);

  // ...
};

export default App;

6. Remove Prisma Studio

You can also delete the now unused Prisma Studio app located at apps/studio:

Terminal

rm -fr apps/studio

7. Update the migration script in the root `package.json`

Change the migration script in the root package.json from Prisma to Drizzle. Update the migrate script to use Drizzle commands:

"scripts": {
  "db:migrate": "cd packages/database && npx drizzle-kit migrate"
  "db:generate": "cd packages/database && npx drizzle-kit generate"
  "db:pull": "cd packages/database && npx drizzle-kit pull"
}

Authentication

Database

Feature flags

Formatting

1. Swap out the required dependencies in `@repo/database`

2. Update the database connection code

3. Create a `drizzle.config.ts` file

4. Generate the schema file

5. Update your queries

6. Remove Prisma Studio

7. Update the migration script in the root `package.json`

​1. Swap out the required dependencies in @repo/database

​2. Update the database connection code

​3. Create a drizzle.config.ts file

​4. Generate the schema file

​5. Update your queries

​6. Remove Prisma Studio

​7. Update the migration script in the root package.json

1. Swap out the required dependencies in `@repo/database`

2. Update the database connection code

3. Create a `drizzle.config.ts` file

4. Generate the schema file

5. Update your queries

6. Remove Prisma Studio

7. Update the migration script in the root `package.json`