Drizzle <> Appwrite Postgres

Appwrite offers dedicated, native PostgreSQL databases that you connect to directly over TLS. There is no Appwrite-specific driver or abstraction layer, so you can use Drizzle with either the node-postgres or postgres.js driver, the same way you would with any PostgreSQL server.

To get your connection string, open your database in the Appwrite Console and click Credentials. The Drizzle tab contains a ready-made snippet, and the DSN and .env tabs contain the raw connection string. You can also fetch it from the Appwrite API with postgresql.get(). The connection string already includes sslmode=require, so no extra TLS configuration is needed.

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://admin:<password>@db-<hash>.<region>.appwrite.center:5432/<database>?sslmode=require"

Step 1 - Install packages

npm i drizzle-orm@rc pg
npm i -D drizzle-kit@rc

yarn add drizzle-orm@rc pg
yarn add -D drizzle-kit@rc

pnpm add drizzle-orm@rc pg
pnpm add -D drizzle-kit@rc

bun add drizzle-orm@rc pg
bun add -D drizzle-kit@rc

npm i drizzle-orm@rc postgres
npm i -D drizzle-kit@rc

yarn add drizzle-orm@rc postgres
yarn add -D drizzle-kit@rc

pnpm add drizzle-orm@rc postgres
pnpm add -D drizzle-kit@rc

bun add drizzle-orm@rc postgres
bun add -D drizzle-kit@rc

Step 2 - Initialize the driver and make a query

// Make sure to install the 'pg' package
import { drizzle } from 'drizzle-orm/node-postgres';

const db = drizzle(process.env.DATABASE_URL);

const result = await db.execute('select 1');

// Make sure to install the 'postgres' package
import { drizzle } from 'drizzle-orm/postgres-js';

const db = drizzle(process.env.DATABASE_URL);

const result = await db.execute('select 1');

If you need to provide your existing drivers:

// Make sure to install the 'pg' package
import { drizzle } from "drizzle-orm/node-postgres";
import { Pool } from "pg";

const pool = new Pool({
  connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL,
});
const db = drizzle({ client: pool });

const result = await db.execute('select 1');

// Make sure to install the 'postgres' package
import { drizzle } from 'drizzle-orm/postgres-js';
import postgres from 'postgres';

const queryClient = postgres(process.env.DATABASE_URL);
const db = drizzle({ client: queryClient });

const result = await db.execute('select 1');

Connection pooling for serverless

Appwrite runs a connection pooler on port 6432 of the same hostname. In serverless and edge environments, route your application traffic through the pooler so short-lived instances don’t exhaust the engine’s connection limit, and keep Drizzle Kit pointed at the direct engine port 5432, because migrations issue DDL that needs a session-level connection.

# Runtime: pooled, transaction mode
DATABASE_URL="postgresql://admin:<password>@db-<hash>.<region>.appwrite.center:6432/<database>?sslmode=require"

# Migrations & introspection: direct connection to the engine
DIRECT_URL="postgresql://admin:<password>@db-<hash>.<region>.appwrite.center:5432/<database>?sslmode=require"

import { defineConfig } from 'drizzle-kit';

export default defineConfig({
  dialect: 'postgresql',
  schema: './src/schema.ts',
  out: './drizzle',
  dbCredentials: {
    url: process.env.DIRECT_URL!,
  },
});

import { drizzle } from 'drizzle-orm/postgres-js';
import postgres from 'postgres';

const queryClient = postgres(process.env.DATABASE_URL, { prepare: false });
const db = drizzle({ client: queryClient });

What’s next?