In this offline lecture, Harkirat expands on the previous Next.js lectures by introducing database interactions using Prisma ORM, implementing better fetching techniques, creating a singleton Prisma client instance, and exploring Server Actions for executing server-side code directly from components.

In the last lecture, we covered the basics of building a Next.js application with server-side rendering, API routes, and client-side interactivity. We explored how to fetch data from an API and render it on the server-side, as well as how to create API routes within our Next.js application to handle backend logic. Well, In this lecture, we will dive deeper into more advanced topics related to building a full-stack application with Next.js.Specifically, we will explore the following:

What will we cover

1. Databases: We will learn how to integrate a database with our Next.js application, allowing us to store and retrieve data persistently.
2. Better Fetching Techniques: While we have used basic fetching techniques in this lecture, we will explore more robust and efficient ways to fetch data from APIs, including optimizations and caching strategies.
3. Singleton Prisma Client: We will introduce Prisma, a popular Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) tool, and learn how to create a singleton instance of the Prisma client for efficient database access.
4. Server Section: We will dive into the server-side capabilities of Next.js, including server-side rendering, server components, and server-side data fetching techniques.

Databases

Next.js is a full-stack framework that allows you to build both the frontend and backend components of your application within a single codebase. While Next.js provides built-in support for server-side rendering (SSR) and API routes, it doesn't include a database solution out of the box. This is where third-party tools like Prisma come into play.

1. Install Prisma

First, we need to install the Prisma package in our Next.js project:

npm install prisma