prisma1 VS Objection.js

For more: https://github.com/prisma/prisma1/issues/3830

Hey there, I'm Nikolas from the Prisma team. Just came here to quickly clarify this notion:

> Prisma is an API server that puts a GraphQL API in front of a DB.

Prisma is an ORM which generates a JavaScript/TypeScript client library for your database.

Your description is very true for Prisma 1 (which has been in maintenance mode for several years and is officially deprecated by now [1]), but the latest version(s) of Prisma (v2+) don't expose a GraphQL API any more. Prisma 1 also used GraphQL SDL for data modeling, the Prisma ORM on the other hand has its own, custom modeling language for describing database schemas in a declarative way and also comes with a flexible migration system.

That being said (and as Jens also mentioned elsewhere), the Prisma ORM does use GraphQL _internally_ as a wire protocol. However, as a developer, you _never_ touch this internal GraphQL layer and are not even supposed to be aware of it (you actually have to jump through a lot of hoops to even "find" it). It's also very likely that we'll replace GraphQL as a wire protocol in the future, so "GraphQL" really isn't something you should be thinking about as a developer who is using Prisma.

Hope that clarifies the situation a bit, let me know if you have any further questions around this topic.

[1] https://github.com/prisma/prisma1/issues/5208

Could you clarify this? Are you referring to the old Prisma 1 Cloud or the new Prisma Data Platform?

First released in 2019, Prisma is the newest ORM of the four we discussed. It will need time to get to a more mature state. Recently, the release of version 3 introduced a few breaking changes. There are also some existing issues noted in GitHub, such as that it does not support some Postgres column types.

Mongoose is quite a standard also open-source, but Prisma is an emerging modern solution that seems to take the cake.

Well, here comes Blitz, the agnostic monolith. Take the database, for example - Blitz comes out-of-the-box with Prisma 2. However, you're free to switch to another one like Fauna or DynamoDB. The same goes for the configuration; deciding a folder structure, defining routing conventions, selecting a styling library, and adding authorization and authentication are all set up by default, but that doesn't mean you cannot go your own way.

There is also a RealWorld port (Rakkas implementation of the RealWorld specification), a simple but complete fullstack application demonstrating how to approach building a REST API, accessing your database (via Prisma), handling authentication, testing, and more.

For a different direction, there’s Prisma. A lot of people love it and they do a ton of developer outreach. I bet someone from the company that makes it will show up to comment now that their name has been mentioned. They released a schema migration tool sometime in the last six months that looks amazing and would probably convince me to give it a go if I was starting a new project. https://www.prisma.io/

Express + Prisma

One of the steps was seeding a database in a Prisma project. The Prisma CLI exposes a seed command, but at the time of writing this, it's a preview-feature and its implementation is being redesigned.

Objection.js is a SQL-friendly ORM for Node.js that supports various relational databases, including PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite. It provides a flexible and expressive query builder. Objection.js is known for its expressive syntax, allowing developers to build complex queries easily. It supports eager loading, transactions, and migrations.

I don't think there's a best per say, but we did recently use Objection on our project. Did the job well, only issue is there's no constructor for the DB Models but it's just something you work around (https://vincit.github.io/objection.js/)

If you aren't using TypeScript I'd very much recommend Objection.js, I've used it multiple times and no complaints so far. You can pass raw SQL queries to it as well so I'm sure it would be a good fit for your project!

Next, let’s set up the database for our newly created Nest application. I’ll be using PostgreSQL, but you can use any of the databases Knex supports. To interact with our database, we’ll be using Objection.js, which is an ORM for Node.js built on top Knex. For this tutorial, we’ll be using Nest Objection, a Nest module for Objection.

Objection.js is a very good one https://vincit.github.io/objection.js/

After getting familiar with svelte, I started my project on Sapper, the predecessor of Sveltekit. Sapper was an easier take for me compared to the alternatives, and I enjoyed exploring js-land using a "non-express" node based framework. I also ventured into tailwind for the front-end UI, and Objection JS (a superset of Knex) for backend database access. I was in nirvana!

import BaseModel from "../BaseMode"; export class User extends BaseModel { // Name of table that this model maps back to // Table name is the only required property. public static tableName = 'ENTER_TABLE_NAME'; // Example property public foo!: string; // Add other table fields (columns) as properties to access them via the model // Define the relations to other models. // READ MORE at https://vincit.github.io/objection.js/guide/relations.html public static relationMappings = () => ({ // specify relation with other modules }) }