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Getting started

Prerequisites​

To get started with Accelerate, you will need the following:

  • A Prisma Data Platform workspace.
  • A project that uses Prisma Client 4.16.1 or higher. If your project is using interactive transactions, you need to use 5.1.1 or higher. (We always recommend using the latest version of Prisma.)
  • A hosted PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, PlanetScale, CockroachDB, or MongoDB database.

1. Enable Accelerate​

Navigate to your Prisma Data Platform project, choose an environment, and enable Accelerate by providing your database connection string and selecting the region nearest your database.

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If you require IP allowlisting or firewall configurations with trusted IP addresses, enable Static IP for enhanced security

2. Add Accelerate to your application​

2.1. Update your database connection string​

Once enabled, you'll be prompted to generate an API key that you'll use in your new Accelerate connection string to authenticate requests.

Replace your direct database url with your new Accelerate connection string.

.env
# New Accelerate connection string with generated API_KEY
DATABASE_URL="prisma://accelerate.prisma-data.net/?api_key=__API_KEY__"

# Previous (direct) database connection string
# DATABASE_URL="postgresql://user:password@host:port/db_name?schema=public"

Your updated connection string will be used as the datasource url in your Prisma schema file;

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

Prisma Migrate and Introspection do not work with a prisma:// connection string. In order to continue using these features add a new variable to the .env file named DIRECT_DATABASE_URL whose value is the direct database connection string:

.env
DATABASE_URL="prisma://accelerate.prisma-data.net/?api_key=__API_KEY__"
DIRECT_DATABASE_URL="postgresql://user:password@host:port/db_name?schema=public"

Then in your Prisma schema's datasource block add a field named directUrl with the following:

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

Migrations and introspections will use the directUrl connection string rather than the one defined in url when this configuration is provided.

directUrl is useful for you to carry out migrations and introspections. However, you don't need directUrl to use Accelerate in your application.

2.2. Install the Accelerate Prisma Client extension​

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💡 Accelerate requires Prisma Client version 4.16.1 or higher and @prisma/extension-accelerate version 1.0.0 or higher

Install the latest version of Prisma Client and Accelerate Prisma Client extension

npm install @prisma/client@latest @prisma/extension-accelerate

2.3. Generate Prisma Client for Accelerate​

If you're using Prisma version 5.2.0 or greater, Prisma Client will automatically determine how it should connect to the database depending on the protocol in the database connection string. If the connection string in the DATABASE_URL starts with prisma://, Prisma Client will try to connect to your database using Prisma Accelerate.

When using Prisma Accelerate in long-running application servers, such as a server deployed on AWS EC2, you can generate the Prisma Client by executing the following command:

npx prisma generate

When using Prisma Accelerate in a Serverless or an Edge application, we recommend you to run the following command to generate Prisma Client:

npx prisma generate --no-engine
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The --no-engine flag prevents a Query Engine file from being included in the generated Prisma Client, this ensures the bundle size of your application remains small.

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If your Prisma version is below 5.2.0, generate Prisma Client with the --accelerate option:

npx prisma generate --accelerate

If your Prisma version is below 5.0.0, generate Prisma Client with the --data-proxy option:

2.4. Extend your Prisma Client instance with the Accelerate extension​

Add the following to extend your existing Prisma Client instance with the Accelerate extension:

import { PrismaClient } from '@prisma/client'
import { withAccelerate } from '@prisma/extension-accelerate'

const prisma = new PrismaClient().$extends(withAccelerate())

If you are going to deploy to an edge runtime (like Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge Functions, Deno Deploy, or Supabase Edge Functions), use our edge client instead:

import { PrismaClient } from '@prisma/client/edge'
import { withAccelerate } from '@prisma/extension-accelerate'

const prisma = new PrismaClient().$extends(withAccelerate())

If VS Code does not recognize the $extends method, refer to this section on how to resolve the issue.

info

If you are using Prisma Middleware in your application, make sure they are added before any Prisma Client extensions (like Accelerate). For example:

const prisma = new PrismaClient().$use(middleware).$extends(withAccelerate())

2.5. Use Accelerate in your database queries​

The withAccelerate extension primarily does two things:

  • Gives you access to the cacheStrategy field within each applicable model method that allows you to define a cache strategy per-query.
  • Routes all of your queries through a connection pooler.

No cache strategy to only use connection pool​

If you simply want to take advantage of Accelerate's connection pooling feature without applying a cache strategy, you may run your query the same way you would have without Accelerate.

By enabling Accelerate and supplying the Accelerate connection string, your queries now use the connection pooler by default.

Define a cache strategy​

Update a query with the new cacheStrategy property which allows you to define a cache strategy for that specific query:

const user = await prisma.user.findMany({
  where: {
    email: {
      contains: 'alice@prisma.io',
    },
  },
  cacheStrategy: { swr: 60, ttl: 60 },
})

In the example above, swr: 60 and ttl: 60 means Accelerate will serve cached data for 60 seconds and then another 60 seconds while Accelerate fetches fresh data in the background.

You should now see improved performance for your cached queries.

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For information about which strategy best serves your application, see Select a cache strategy.

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As of Prisma version 5.2.0 you can use Prisma Studio with the Accelerate connection string.