postgres shows spinning database connection

Hi farva! I faced this before and was stuck for a pretty long time, but I have the solution now!

The problem:
At the build phase, you do NOT have access to your internal network.

There was a time where railway built an experimental "Builder V2" which allowed it, but then it seems to be deprecated: https://railway.com/changelog/2025-05-02-great-metal-migration#builder-v2-deprecation

But that's not a problem! Here's how I do it for Prisma with NextJS.

Option 1 (recommended)

Build command: prisma generate && next build
Start command: prisma migrate deploy && next start

This works because:-

• prisma generate does not need network access, and therefore can be done at the build phase.

• prisma migrate deploy needs network access to your database. You only have access to the database via the internal network at the start phase, so I run it here. prisma migrate deploy doesn't do anything if your database is up to date, and it only slows down your restarts by a second or so, so I think this is okay.

• prisma migrate deploy does not actually modify your source code (unlike prisma migrate dev), and that's why it can be run after deployment.

Option 2 (NOT recommended)

Use ${{Postgres.DATABASE_PUBLIC_URL}} instead of ${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}} as the DATABASE_URL environment variable for your app. ${{Postgres.DATABASE_PUBLIC_URL}} points to the database publicly through the internet, and therefore works during the build phase without internal network access.

I've used it before, but I don't believe it's a good idea because:-

• Additional routing through the internet may be needed (potentially increased ping in every database-accessing request)

• It's less secure because your application runtime now has an internationally accessible authenticated DATABASE_URL to your database.