Migrating a Prisma Database: My Workflow

––– views

1 min read

January 12, 2023 March 10, 2023

Prisma migration commands are long and confusing, here is a list of 5 commands that you need to effectively run migrations

List of commands

JSON package.json
"scripts": {
	"migrate:status": "prisma migrate status",
	"migrate:dev": "prisma migrate dev",
	"migrate:resolve": "prisma migrate resolve --applied $MIGRATION",
	"migrate:deploy": "prisma migrate deploy",
	"migrate:push": "prisma db push"
}

:status - shows which migration you have locally but not applied to target database

:dev - creates a new migration from the active changes in schema.prisma

:resolve - applies the new migration to the target database

:deploy - deploys the changes to the database (but they are not live yet)

:push - command to sync local changes with database

My migration workflow

In my prisma/.env file I keep all the different databases that I need to connect to.

PLAIN TEXT 
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:damjan@localhost/dbname
// the db we're targeting is on the bottom
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:damjan@localhost/mylocaldb

The first one (dbname) is an empty local database, whenever I need to create a new migration I always switch to this DB, to not lose any data from the one I’m using.

📢

I suggest you have 2 local databases one for keeping test data and one for migration

Action steps to achieve a migration

Do the model changes in schema.prisma

Start by changing the target database to a local one

run npm run migrate:dev

At this point, you will be asked to name the migration

After successfully creating a new migration change to the target database you want to migrate

By running npm run migrate:status you’ll see all the pending migrations, if you want to apply all the pending migrations run npm run migrate:deploy

To migrate a single migration run MIGRATION=”new_migration_name” npm run migrate:resolve - This will apply the migration to the current target DB

Now run npm run migrate:deploy

This will deploy the changes

Finally, run npm run migrate:push

If all goes well you should see: “🚀 Your database is now in sync with your Prisma schema.“

🔥

When adding new properties to an existing model make sure they have a default value or are not required.

To comment please authenticate