Drizzle Express Installation

This guide covers everything you need to know to install and create your first API.

Step 1: Create new project

Start by creating a new npm project using npm init.

mkdir my-api
cd my-api
npm init -y

Step 2: Run the CLI

Run the drizzle-express init command to setup your project.

npx drizzle-express@latest init

Step 3: Configure project

You will be asked a few questions to configure the app:

? Which package manager would you like to use? npm
? Which database dialect would you like to use? sqlite
? Which primary key generation strategy would you like to use? cuid2

TIP

Alternatively, you can also run the command non-interactively:

npx drizzle-express@latest init --package-manager npm --db-dialect sqlite --pk-strategy cuid2

Step 4: Scaffold an app

In this example, we'll create a simple blog application.

Create a categories schema:

npx drizzle-express@latest scaffold category -c name:text

Create a posts schema:

npx drizzle-express@latest scaffold post -c title:text category_id:references content:text is_draft:boolean published_at:timestamp

Run the drizzle migrations:

npx drizzle-kit generate
npx drizzle-kit migrate

Step 5: Start dev server

Start the dev server:

npm run dev

Test API:

curl -X POST -d '{"name": "test"}' --header 'Content-Type: application/json' localhost:3001/categories
curl localhost:3001/categories

You should now have a fully functional CRUD API for a posts resource.