Start from scratch with MongoDB (15 min) | typescript-mongodb

Learn how to create a new Node.js or TypeScript project from scratch by connecting Prisma to your MongoDB database and generating a Prisma Client for database access. The following tutorial introduces you to the Prisma CLI and Prisma Client .

See System requirements for exact version requirements.

Make sure you have your database connection URL at hand. If you don’t have a database server running and just want to explore Prisma, check out the Quickstart .

The MongoDB database connector uses transactions to support nested writes. Transactions require a replica set deployment. The easiest way to deploy a replica set is with Atlas . It’s free to get started.

Access to a MongoDB 4.2+ server with a replica set deployment. We recommend using MongoDB Atlas .

Node.js installed on your machine

In order to successfully complete this guide, you need:

Create project setup

As a first step, create a project directory and navigate into it:

$
mkdir hello-prisma
$
cd hello-prisma
Next, initialize a TypeScript project and add the Prisma CLI as a development dependency to it:
$
npm init -y
$
npm install prisma typescript ts-node @types/node --save-dev
This creates a package.json with an initial setup for your TypeScript app.
Next, initialize TypeScript:
$
npx tsc --init
Next, initialize a Node.js project and add the Prisma CLI as a development dependency to it:
$
npm init -y
$
npm install prisma --save-dev
This creates a package.json with an initial setup for a Node.js app.
You can now invoke the Prisma CLI by prefixing it with npx:
$
npx prisma
Next, set up your Prisma project by creating your Prisma schema file with the following command:
$
npx prisma init
This command does two things:

creates a new directory called prisma that contains a file called schema.prisma, which contains the Prisma schema with your database connection variable and schema models
creates the .env file in the root directory of the project, which is used for defining environment variables (such as your database connection)