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Team development

To incorporate changes from collaborators:

  1. Pull the changed Prisma schema and ./prisma/migrations folder

  2. Run the migrate dev command to apply new migrations:

    npx prisma migrate dev

Migrations are applied in the same order as they were created. The creation date is part of the migration subfolder name - for example, 20210316081837-updated-fields was created on 2021-03-16-08:18:37.

warning

This guide does not apply for MongoDB.
Instead of migrate dev, db push is used for MongoDB.

Example: Incorporating your team's changes

The following sample scenario demonstrates how a team of three developers share and incorporate changes to the Prisma schema and the migration history.

The following tabs show the team's Prisma schema before and after a round of changes:

schema.prisma
model Post {
id Int @id @default(autoincrement())
title String
content String?
published Boolean @default(false)
author User? @relation(fields: [authorId], references: [id])
authorId Int?
}

model User {
id Int @id @default(autoincrement())
email String @unique
name String?
posts Post[]
}

The team's changes

Your team members Ania and Javier make additive changes to the schema in their local environment and generate migrations.

Ania makes the following changes:

  1. Adds a model field:

    model User {
    /* ... */
    favoriteColor String?
    }
  2. Generates a migration:

    npx prisma migrate dev --name new-field
  3. Commits the changed schema and the new migration:

    • ./prisma/schema.prisma
    • ./prisma/migrations/20210316081837-new-field/migration.sql

Javier makes the following changes:

  1. Adds a new model to the schema:

    model Tag {
    tagName String @id
    tagCategory Category
    }
  2. Generates a migration:

    npx prisma migrate dev --name new-model
  3. Commits the changed schema and the new migration:

    • ./prisma/schema.prisma
    • ./prisma/migrations/20210316091837-new-model/migration.sql

The migration history now has two new migrations:

A diagram showing changes by two separate developers converging in a single migration history.

Integrating changes

You want to incorporate your team's changes. To do that, you:

  1. Pull the most recent changes from your team, including:

    • Two new migrations:

      • ./prisma/migrations/20210316081837-new-field/migration.sql
      • ./prisma/migrations/20210316091837-new-model/migration.sql
    • An updated schema file. Git automatically merges the updated schema with your local schema changes (a new bestPacmanScore field):

      model User {
      /* ... */
      favoriteColor String?
      bestPacmanScore Int?
      }

      model Tag {
      tagName String @id
      tagCategory Category
      posts Post[]
      }
  2. Run the migrate dev command:

    npx prisma migrate dev
    1. Applies Ania and Javier's migrations to your local database.

      • ./prisma/migrations/20210316081837-new-field/migration.sql
      • ./prisma/migrations/20210316091837-new-model/migration.sql
    2. Creates a new migration with your changes, prompts you to name it (pacman-field), and applies the new migration to your local database:

      • ./prisma/migrations/20210322081837-pacman-field/migration.sql
  3. Commit the merged schema.prisma and your new migration: ./prisma/migrations/20210322081837-pacman-field/migration.sql

Your schema.prisma and local database now include your team's changes, and the migration history includes your migration:

A migration history with 5 migrations.

Source control

You should commit the following files to source control:

  • The contents of the .prisma/migrations folder, including the migration_lock.toml file
  • The Prisma Schema (schema.prisma)

Source-controlling the schema.prisma file is not enough - you must include your migration history. This is because:

  • As you start to customize migrations, your migration history contains information that cannot be represented in the Prisma schema. For example, you can customize a migration to mitigate data loss that would be caused by a breaking change.
  • The prisma migrate deploy command, which is used to deploy changes to staging, testing, and production environments, only runs migration files. Prisma Migrate only uses the schema to read the url and provider fields, not models and fields.