@neondatabase/vite-plugin-postgres

Vite-Plugin-Postgres by Neon

This Vite plugin instantly provisions a Postgres instance (via Neon) and injects the connection string into your .env file, so you can start developing immediately.

How it works

• On first vite dev, the plugin checks for a DATABASE_URL (or your configured key) in your .env.
• If not found, it creates a claimable Neon database and writes the connection string to your .env.
• The plugin is a noop in production builds.

Installation

npm add @neondatabase/vite-plugin-postgres

Usage

Add the plugin as the first entry in your Vite config:

import postgresPlugin from "@neondatabase/vite-plugin-postgres";
import react from "@vitejs/plugin-react";
import { defineConfig } from "vite";

export default defineConfig({
	plugins: [postgresPlugin(), react()],
});

Configuration

You can pass an options object to customize the .env file path and the environment variable name:

postgresPlugin({
	env: ".env.local", // Path to your .env file (default: ".env")
	envKey: "DATABASE_URL", // Name of the env variable (default: "DATABASE_URL")
});

Option	Type	Description	Default
env	string	Path to the .env file	.env
envKey	string	Name of the environment variable	DATABASE_URL

What gets written

• The plugin writes both a direct connection string and a pooled connection string to your .env.
• It also provides a claim URL (valid for 7 days) to take ownership of the database.

Type Definitions

interface PostgresPluginOptions {
	env: string; // Path to the .env file
	envKey: string; // Name of the environment variable
}

FAQ

What if I already have a DATABASE_URL env var?

The plugin will not overwrite it. Remove the variable if you want to generate a new Neon database.

Is this safe to run on CI when building for production?

The plugin is a noop in production mode (vite build), so it won't create databases or modify your .env in CI.

Can I use this with other frameworks?

Yes, this plugin is framework-agnostic. The example uses React, but you can use it with any Vite-compatible framework.

Advanced

If you want to generate claimable databases outside of Vite, use the neondb library directly.

See documentation on Neon for more.