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Kysely is a type-safe SQL query builder for TypeScript.
Already created a PlanetScale Postgres database? Jump straight to integration instructions.
We’ll cover:
  • Creating a new Postgres database
  • Cluster configuration options
  • Connecting to your database

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Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have a PlanetScale account. After you create an account, you’ll be prompted to create a new organization, which is essentially a container for your databases, settings, and members. After creating your organization, it’s important to understand the relationship between databases, branches, and clusters.
  • Database: Your overall project (e.g., “my-ecommerce-app”)
  • Branch: Isolated database deployments that provide you with separate environments for development and testing, as well as restoring from backups - learn more about branching
  • Cluster: The underlying compute and storage infrastructure that powers each branch
PlanetScale for Postgres clusters use real Postgres in a high-availability architecture with one primary and two replicas.

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Create a new database

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Step 1: Navigate to database creation

1
Log in to your PlanetScale dashboard
2
Select your organization from the dropdown
3
Click “New database” button or navigate to /new

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Step 2: Choose database engine

1
On the database creation form, you’ll see two engine options:
  • Vitess (MySQL-compatible)
  • Postgres (PostgreSQL-compatible)
2
Select Postgres to create a PostgreSQL database

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Step 3: Configure your database cluster

1
Database name: Enter a unique name for your database
2
Region: Choose the primary region where your database will be hosted
This “name” is referenced in the PlanetScale Dashboard and APIs and not created as a logical database inside of Postgres.
3
Cluster configuration: Select your preferred cluster size and CPU architecture

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Step 4: Create the database cluster

1
Review your configuration settings
2
Click “Create database” to provision your Postgres database
3
Your database will be created with a main branch by default

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What happens during creation

When you create a Postgres database cluster, PlanetScale automatically:
  • Provisions a PostgreSQL cluster in your selected region
  • Creates the initial main branch
  • Prepopulates Postgres with required default databases
  • Sets up monitoring and metrics collection
  • Configures backup and high availability settings

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Create credentials and connect

In this section you’ll create the “Default role” in your PlanetScale dashboard to create connection credentials for your database branch.
The “Default role” is meant purely for administrative purposes. You can only create one and it has significant privileges for your database cluster and you should treat these credentials carefully. After completing this quickstart, it is strongly recommended that you create another role for your application use-cases.
Database dashboard
1
Navigate to your database in the PlanetScale dashboard
2
Click on the “Connect” button in the top right
3
Select “Default role”
4
Click “Create default role”. A new default role is created for your database branch.
5
Record the “Host”, “Username”, and “Password” for the “Default role” someplace secure.Create a new role
6
You can generate connection strings under “How are you connecting?” for major languages, frameworks, and tools.Connection stringsYour connection details will include:
  • Host: the DNS name of your database endpoint
  • Username: automatically formatted for routing to the correct branch
  • Password: A securely generated password
  • Database: postgres (default database)
  • Port: 5432 (standard PostgreSQL port) or 6432 (for using PgBouncer)
Passwords are shown only once. If you lose your record of the password, you must reset the password.

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Integrate with Kysely

Installation instructions vary depending on your choice of JavaScript runtime or framework. The following are general instructions for installing Drizzle and connecting to your database.

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Step 1: Install packages

Run the following to install kysely and pg:
Terminal
npm install kysely pg
Optionally, you can also install dotenv to load your credentials from an .env file for local development.
Terminal
npm install dotenv

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Step 2: Add credentials to .env

For local development, you can place your credentials in a .env file. For production, we recommend setting your credentials as environment variables wherever your application is deployed. Replace the placeholders below with the role credentials created in the previous section.
.env
DATABASE_URL='postgresql://{username}:{password}@{host}:{port}/{database}?sslmode=verify-full'
Choose the appropriate port for your use case. Learn more about Direct vs PgBouncer connections.

PgBouncer

Port 6432 enables a lightweight connection pooler for PostgreSQL. This facilitates better performance when there are many simultaneous connections.

Direct

Port 5432 connects directly to PostgreSQL. Total connections are limited by your cluster’s max_connections setting.
Both connection types will disconnect when your database restarts or handles a failover scenario.

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Step 3: Create a database connection

app.ts
import 'dotenv/config'

import { Kysely, PostgresDialect } from 'kysely'
import { Pool } from 'pg'
import { Database } from './types.ts' // you set this up locally

const db = new Kysely<Database>({
  dialect: new PostgresDialect({
    pool: new Pool({
      connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL,
      database: 'postgres'
    })
  })
})
Where you import this db variable will depend on your choice of JavaScript runtime or framework. For more information on using Kysely including creating schemas and performing queries, refer to their documentation.

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Need help?

Get help from the PlanetScale Support team, or join our GitHub discussion board to see how others are using PlanetScale.