`drizzle-kit pull`

This guide assumes familiarity with:

Get started with Drizzle and drizzle-kit - read here
Drizzle schema fundamentals - read here
Database connection basics - read here
Drizzle migrations fundamentals - read here
Drizzle Kit overview and config file docs

drizzle-kit pull lets you literally pull(introspect) your existing database schema and generate schema.ts drizzle schema file, it is designed to cover database first approach of Drizzle migrations.

How it works under the hood?

When you run Drizzle Kit pull command it will:

Pull database schema(DDL) from your existing database
Generate schema.ts drizzle schema file and save it to out folder

                                  ┌────────────────────────┐      ┌─────────────────────────┐ 
                                  │                        │ <---  CREATE TABLE "users" (
┌──────────────────────────┐      │                        │       	"id" int4 PRIMARY KEY,
│ ~ drizzle-kit pull       │      │                        │       	"name" string,
└─┬────────────────────────┘      │                        │       	"email" string unique
  │                               │        DATABASE        │       );
  │                               │                        │
  └ Pull datatabase schema -----> │                        │
  ┌ Generate Drizzle       <----- │                        │
  │ schema TypeScript file        └────────────────────────┘
  │
  v

import * as p from "drizzle-orm/cockroach-core";

export const users = p.cockroachTable("users", {
    id: p.int4().primaryKey(),
    name: p.string(),
    email: p.string(),
  },
  (table) => [p.uniqueIndex('users_email_key').using('btree', table.email.asc())],
);

It is a great approach if you need to manage database schema outside of your TypeScript project or you’re using database, which is managed by somebody else.

drizzle-kit pull requires you to specify dialect and either database connection url or user:password@host:port/db params, you can provide them either via drizzle.config.ts config file or via CLI options:

With config file

With CLI options

// drizzle.config.ts
import { defineConfig } from "drizzle-kit";

export default defineConfig({
  dialect: "cockroach",
  dbCredentials: {
    url: "postgresql://user:password@host:port/dbname",
  },
});

npx drizzle-kit pull

npx drizzle-kit pull --dialect=cockroach --url=postgresql://user:password@host:port/dbname

Multiple configuration files in one project

You can have multiple config files in the project, it’s very useful when you have multiple database stages or multiple databases or different databases on the same project:

npm

yarn

pnpm

bun

npx drizzle-kit pull --config=drizzle-dev.config.ts
npx drizzle-kit pull --config=drizzle-prod.config.ts

yarn drizzle-kit pull --config=drizzle-dev.config.ts
yarn drizzle-kit pull --config=drizzle-prod.config.ts

pnpm drizzle-kit pull --config=drizzle-dev.config.ts
pnpm drizzle-kit pull --config=drizzle-prod.config.ts

bunx drizzle-kit pull --config=drizzle-dev.config.ts
bunx drizzle-kit pull --config=drizzle-prod.config.ts

📦 <project root>
 ├ 📂 drizzle
 ├ 📂 src
 ├ 📜 .env
 ├ 📜 drizzle-dev.config.ts
 ├ 📜 drizzle-prod.config.ts
 ├ 📜 package.json
 └ 📜 tsconfig.json

Specifying database driver

Drizzle Kit does not come with a pre-bundled database driver, it will automatically pick available database driver from your current project based on the dialect - see discussion.

Initial pull

You can use the --init flag to mark the pulled schema as an applied migration in your database, so that all subsequent migrations are diffed against the initial one

npx drizzle-kit pull --init

Including tables, schemas and extensions

drizzle-kit pull will by default manage all tables in all schemas. You can configure list of tables, schemas and extensions via tablesFilters, schemaFilter and extensionFilters options.


`tablesFilter`	`glob` based table names filter, e.g. `["users", "user_info"]` or `"user"`. Default is `""`
`schemaFilter`	`glob` based schema names filter, e.g. `["public", "drizzle"]` or `"drizzle"`. Default is `""`

Let’s configure drizzle-kit to only operate with all tables in public schema and let drizzle-kit know that there’s a postgis extension installed, which creates it’s own tables in public schema, so drizzle can ignore them.

import { defineConfig } from "drizzle-kit";

export default defineConfig({
  dialect: "cockroach",
  schema: "./src/schema.ts",
  dbCredentials: {
    url: "postgresql://user:password@host:port/dbname",
  },
  schemaFilter: ["public"],
  tablesFilter: ["*"],
});

npx drizzle-kit pull

Extended list of configurations

We recommend configuring drizzle-kit through drizzle.config.ts file, yet you can provide all configuration options through CLI if necessary, e.g. in CI/CD pipelines, etc.


`dialect`	`required`	Database dialect, one of `postgresql` `mysql` `sqlite` `turso` `singlestore` `mssql` `cockroach`
`driver`		Drivers exceptions `aws-data-api` `d1-http` `pglite`
`out`		Migrations output folder path, default is `./drizzle`
`url`		Database connection string
`user`		Database user
`password`		Database password
`host`		Host
`port`		Port
`database`		Database name
`config`		Configuration file path, default is `drizzle.config.ts`
`introspect-casing`		Strategy for JS keys creation in columns, tables, etc. `preserve` `camel`
`tablesFilter`		Table name filter
`schemaFilter`		Schema name filter. Default: `["*"]`

npm

yarn

pnpm

bun

npx drizzle-kit pull --dialect=cockroach --url=postgresql://user:password@host:port/dbname
npx drizzle-kit pull --dialect=cockroach --driver=pglite url=database/
npx drizzle-kit pull --dialect=cockroach --tablesFilter=‘user*’ url=postgresql://user:password@host:port/dbname

yarn drizzle-kit pull --dialect=cockroach --url=postgresql://user:password@host:port/dbname
yarn drizzle-kit pull --dialect=cockroach --driver=pglite url=database/
yarn drizzle-kit pull --dialect=cockroach --tablesFilter=‘user*’ url=postgresql://user:password@host:port/dbname

pnpm drizzle-kit pull --dialect=cockroach --url=postgresql://user:password@host:port/dbname
pnpm drizzle-kit pull --dialect=cockroach --driver=pglite url=database/
pnpm drizzle-kit pull --dialect=cockroach --tablesFilter=‘user*’ url=postgresql://user:password@host:port/dbname

bunx drizzle-kit pull --dialect=cockroach --url=postgresql://user:password@host:port/dbname
bunx drizzle-kit pull --dialect=cockroach --driver=pglite url=database/
bunx drizzle-kit pull --dialect=cockroach --tablesFilter=‘user*’ url=postgresql://user:password@host:port/dbname