Hey there! We've found the following might help you get unblocked faster:

• 🧵 Postgres Database Connection Error

• 🧵 Database Connection Error

• 🧵 Can't get correct DB connection

• 🧵 Prisma connection error (Neon)

If you find the answer from one of these, please let us know by solving the thread!

i am using Postgres on Railway and using the DATABASE_URL variable value in the nexjs app environment variable that my app uses.

The private network is not available during build. You do it with a pre-deploy command, more details at https://docs.railway.com/guides/pre-deploy-command

You can find it in Settings -> Deploy

So the same command but in pre-deploy? And it should not be part of my package.json?

It should be part of the package.json, the screenshot I sent was wrong.

If your npm script is called “db:migrate” then run that as a Predeploy command

i have these 2 commands in my json, so am i adding the "build:railway" under Settings --> Deploy as pre-build command?

    "build": "prisma generate && next build",
    "build:railway": "prisma generate && prisma migrate deploy && next build",

It’d be like this (you don’t need the build:railway one):

"build": "prisma generate && next build",
"db:migrate": "prisma generate && prisma migrate deploy",

i am still getting database error from the last deploy but it seems to have little more progress. But same database related error.
prisma:error

Invalid prisma.settings.findFirst() invocation:

Can't reach database server at postgres.railway.internal:5432

Please make sure your database server is running at postgres.railway.internal:5432.

If you click your database service, then go to Settings -> Network, does it look like this?

yes,

so based on my research it seems like this is what is happening.

The Next.js build is still trying to connect to the Railway database during the build phase, which is not allowed—the private network is only available during pre-deploy and runtime, not build.

What’s happening?

• Your build process (npm run build:railway) runs next build, which tries to prerender pages (like /sitemap.xml, /test-schema/page) that use Prisma to fetch data from the database.

• Since the database is not accessible during build, all Prisma queries fail, causing the build to error out.

How to fix:

1. Switch to Dynamic Rendering for DB Pages

   • Any page or API route that uses Prisma (database access) must be rendered at runtime (on-demand), not at build time.

   • In Next.js, use export const dynamic = "force-dynamic" at the top of those files (e.g., in /sitemap.xml/route.ts, /test-schema/page.tsx, etc.).

   • Remove any getStaticProps, getStaticPaths, or static export logic that fetches from the database.

2. Do NOT prerender database-dependent pages

   • Only statically generate pages that do not require database access.

   • All others should use SSR (Server-Side Rendering) or API routes.

3. Update your build script

   • Your build script should only run static build steps:
     
     This is quite a lot of rewrite for me and it defeats the SSG (Static Site Generation) logic i had for my content pages which is need for performance and effective SEO. This is basically telling me to implement SSR (Which is just Server Side Rendering)
     
     Let me know if there is any workaround.

You can try using the DATABASE_PUBLIC_URL as your DATABASE_URL during build

where do i mention that?

i tried this but still not working. It still keeps looking for internal

  "build:railway": "DATABASE_URL=$DATABASE_PUBLIC_URL prisma generate && next build",

i can see that the command gets executed with Public URL parameter, but logs shows its still looking for other url
> roccos@0.1.0 build:railway

> DATABASE_URL=$DATABASE_PUBLIC_URL prisma generate && next build

Prisma schema loaded from prisma/schema.prisma

Generated Prisma Client (v6.17.1) to ./node_modules/@prisma/client in 157ms

Start by importing your Prisma Client (See: https://pris.ly/d/importing-client)

Tip: Want to turn off tips and other hints? https://pris.ly/tip-4-nohints

Invalid next.config.ts options detected:

Unrecognized key(s) in object: 'swcMinify'

See more info here: https://nextjs.org/docs/messages/invalid-next-config

▲ Next.js 15.5.6

- Experiments (use with caution):

· optimizePackageImports

Creating an optimized production build ...

<w> [webpack.cache.PackFileCacheStrategy] Serializing big strings (128kiB) impacts deserialization performance (consider using Buffer instead and decode when needed)

✓ Compiled successfully in 10.3s

Skipping linting

Checking validity of types ...

Collecting page data ...

Generating static pages (0/59) ...

prisma:error

Invalid prisma.settings.findFirst() invocation:

Can't reach database server at postgres.railway.internal:5432

Please make sure your database server is running at postgres.railway.internal:5432.

Are you using a Dockerfile? If so, can you share it?

i dont think im using docker

i just use docker for my local development

Any updates?

Can you try updating your npm script to this?

```

"build:railway": "prisma generate && DATABASE_URL=$DATABASE_PUBLIC_URL next build"
```

In the version you shared, the DATABASE_URL replacement was done for the prisma generate command, not next build.

now i get prisma:error

Invalid prisma.settings.findFirst() invocation:

error: Error validating datasource db: You must provide a nonempty URL. The environment variable DATABASE_URL resolved to an empty string.

Make sure your service has DATABASE_PUBLIC_URL env variable defined. There's a chance you only have DATABASE_URL referencing the private network URL and since DATABASE_PUBLIC_URL is empty, it errors out.

i have this under the service variables

It looks like those changes haven't been applied yet. Apply the changes (and it will redeploy and hopefully succeed)

it was already applied, i came to this screen to show that it was already there. i dont know where as to click apply.

Can you see something like this on your dashboard?

If not, try refreshing just to make sure. After the refresh, check if the variable is there. It shouldn't be purple

ok trying now

ok that worked

Glad to hear! If you run into any other issues let me know :)

but none of the api calls working

What are the errors?

GET https://roccositaliansausages.com/api/auth/error 500 (Internal Server Error)

basically looks like all auth related errors.

Try debugging your app deploy logs to see what's going on, but seems unrelated

but everything works locally fine for me.

and where can i check application logs on Railway?

i was seeing this in the deploy logs

[auth][error] UntrustedHost: Host must be trusted. URL was: https://roccositaliansausages.com/api/auth/session. Read more at https://errors.authjs.dev#untrustedhost
    at /app/.next/server/middleware.js:416:51219
    at hp (/app/.next/server/middleware.js:416:53914)
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)
    ```

Hello!

You can find logs for your deployments and services in several places. In brief, if you click on the service and panel should pop out from the right, you can click on the View Logs button. This will pop open a new panel which shows you the services build and deploy logs.

You can also click on the Logs link in the top nav bar.

You can learn more about logs here:

https://docs.railway.com/guides/logs

It looks like you need to set the AUTH_TRUST_HOST=true environment variable. What is the value of NEXTAUTH_URL? Is it https://roccositaliansausages.com?

i did set AUTH_TRUST_HOST=true and but still errors

NEXTAUTH_URL="https://roccositaliansausages.com"

i was able to fix it, turns out NextAuth 5 and Next.js 15 has compatibility issues big time. So i had to downgrade to NextAuth 5

That's great, I'm glad to hear you were able to get the issue resolved!

I assume you meant you downgraded to NextAuth 4?