Deploy a Web App Built on CockroachDB with Vercel

This tutorial shows you how to use Vercel to deploy a web application built with Next.js, Express, Prisma, and CockroachDB Serverless.

Prerequisites

Before starting the tutorial, do the following:

1. Create a CockroachDB Cloud account.

2. Create a Vercel account.

Step 1. Create a CockroachDB Serverless cluster

1. If you haven't already, sign up for a CockroachDB Cloud account.
2. Log in to your CockroachDB Cloud account.
3. On the Clusters page, click Create Cluster.

4. On the Create your cluster page, select Serverless.

   Unless you change your monthly budget, this cluster will be free forever.

5. Click Create cluster.

   Your cluster will be created in a few seconds and the Create SQL user dialog will display.

After the cluster is created, the Connection info window appears. Click the Connection string tab and copy the connection string to a secure location. You will use this connection string to connect to CockroachDB later in the tutorial.

Step 2. Get the code

1. Clone the cockroachdb fork of the prisma-examples repo:

   $ git clone git@github.com:cockroachdb/prisma-examples.git
   

2. Navigate to the rest-nextjs-api-routes directory:

   $ cd typescript/rest-nextjs-api-routes
   

3. Install the application dependencies:

   $ npm install
   

4. Install the vercel and prisma CLI tools:

   $ npm install --global vercel prisma
   

Step 3. Initialize the database

1. Save the connection string you obtained earlier from the CockroachDB Cloud Console to the DATABASE_URL environment variable in an .env file in your project:

   $ echo "DATABASE_URL=<connection-string>" >> .env
   

   Prisma loads the variables defined in .env to the project environment. By default, Prisma uses the DATABASE_URL environment variable as the connection string to the database.

2. Run Prisma Migrate to initialize the database with the schema defined in prisma/prisma.schema.

   $ prisma migrate dev --name init
   

   You should see the following output:

   Your database is now in sync with your schema.
   
   ✔ Generated Prisma Client (3.11.0 | library) to ./node_modules/@prisma/client in 87ms
   

   This command also initializes Prisma Client to communicate with your CockroachDB cluster, based on the configuration in the prisma/schema.prisma file.

Step 4. Deploy the application

1. (Optional) Run the app server locally to preview your site:

   $ npm run dev
   

   You should see the following output:

   ready - started server on 0.0.0.0:3000, url: http://localhost:3000
   

2. Run the vercel command to start deploying the app:

   $ vercel deploy --confirm
   

   You will be asked to sign into your Vercel account. When you authenticate your credentials, you should see the following message:

   > Success! GitHub authentication complete ...
   

   The --confirm flag instructs Vercel to deploy the app to the example-app-typescript-vercel Vercel project, using the default settings:

   🔗  Linked to username/example-app-typescript-vercel (created .vercel and added it to .gitignore)
   🔍  Inspect: https://vercel.com/username/example-app-typescript-vercel/123456789 [1s]
   ✅  Production: https://example-app-typescript-vercel-username.vercel.app [copied to clipboard] [47s]
   📝  Deployed to production. Run `vercel --prod` to overwrite later (https://vercel.link/2F).
   💡  To change the domain or build command, go to https://vercel.com/ericharmeling/example-app-typescript-vercel/settings
   

   Follow the links provided to view and manage your deployed application.

See also

• Vercel's official How to Build a Fullstack App with Next.js, Prisma, and PostgreSQL guide
• How to build a Complete Webapp with React, TypeScript & CockroachDB
• Build a Simple CRUD Node.js App with CockroachDB and Prisma Client

You might also be interested in the following pages:

• Client Connection Parameters
• Connection Pooling
• Data Replication
• Fault Tolerance & Recovery
• Replication & Rebalancing
• Cross-Cloud Migration
• Automated Operations