Turbine + Neon

From zero to typed queries on Neon — Node.js or edge, same API.

1. Install

npm install turbine-orm @neondatabase/serverless

2. Generate your client

Point Turbine at your Neon database and generate a fully-typed client:

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://..." npx turbine generate

This introspects your schema and writes typed accessors to ./generated/turbine/.

3. Connect (Node.js / long-running server)

For traditional Node.js servers, Express, Fastify, or any long-running process:

import { turbine } from './generated/turbine';
 
const db = turbine({
  connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL,
});
 
const users = await db.users.findMany({
  with: { posts: true },
});

4. Connect (Serverless / Edge)

For Vercel Edge, Cloudflare Workers, Deno Deploy, or any serverless runtime:

import { Pool } from '@neondatabase/serverless';
import { turbineHttp } from 'turbine-orm/serverless';
import { SCHEMA } from './generated/turbine/metadata';
 
const pool = new Pool({ connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL });
const db = turbineHttp(pool, SCHEMA);
 
// Same API — works on Vercel Edge, Cloudflare Workers, etc.
const users = await db.users.findMany({
  with: { posts: true },
});

5. Migrations

SQL-first migrations with no shadow database and no proprietary schema DSL:

# Create a migration
npx turbine migrate create add_users_table
 
# Apply migrations
DATABASE_URL="..." npx turbine migrate up
 
# Check status
npx turbine migrate status

Why Turbine on Neon?

  • 110 KB — fits in Cloudflare Workers' 1 MB limit (Prisma: 1.6 MB)
  • Single-query nested reads — one SQL statement via json_agg, not N+1
  • Pipeline batching — N queries in 1 round-trip (critical for high-latency serverless)
  • No adapter layer — turbineHttp(pool, schema) with any pg-compatible driver
  • SQL-first migrations — no shadow database, no proprietary schema DSL

Next steps