Separate enums and constants from the rest of the generated client

Problem

You cannot easily import enum in client code.

// src/app.ts
import { MyEnum } from '@prisma/client'
console.log(MyEnum)

The problem is that all enums are in the same file with the rest of the prism code. This leads to two problems for bundlers:

• Tree-shacking. To import a single enum, you need to analyse and import the entire Prisma dependency tree. Which is not without its side effects. Because of this, shaking the tree is impossible.
• https://github.com/prisma/prisma/issues/12504#issuecomment-1136126199

Suggested solution

Divide the generated client file into several separate ones.

// .prisma/client/index.js
// ...
exports.Prisma = Prisma
exports.MyEnum = required('./enums').MyEnum

//  .prisma/client/enums.js
function makeEnum(x) { return x; }

exports.MyEnum = makeEnum({ /* ... */ })
// will be tree-shaked
exports.AnotherEnum = makeEnum({ /* ... */ })

// @prisma/client/enums
module.exports = {
  ...require('.prisma/client/enums'),
}

This allows you import single enum from separate file

import { MyEnum } from '@prisma/client/enums'

That will not require the bundler to analyze the entire dependency tree. This will allow you to import enums into client code and work around this issue

Workaround

Create own enums end use it

// my-enums/user-role.ts

// Import original enum as type only
import type { UserRoleEnum as UserRoleEnumOrigin } from '@prisma/client'

// Re-export enum for runtime with origin name and type
export const UserRoleEnum = {
  Role1: 'Role1',
  Role2: 'Role2',
} satisfies UserRoleEnumOrigin // require ts v4.9 or higher

// usage
import { UserRoleEnum } from 'my-enums/user-role.ts'

console.log(UserRoleEnum.Role1)
console.log(UserRoleEnum.Role3) // Property 'Role3' does not exist on type '{ Role1: "Role1"; Role2: "Role2"; }'.

[bennettdams]

Workaround

For the each enum model, Prisma does not only give you a const from @prisma/client but also the type as string literal, for example:

…which means you can force only importing the type easily:

import type { PostSegmentImagePosition } from '@prisma/client'

You can now use the string literal directly, or, if you want to use them in an “enum way”, you can build your own:

import type { PostSegmentImagePosition } from '@prisma/client'

const imagePositionEnum: { [K in PostSegmentImagePosition]: K } = {
  RIGHT: "RIGHT",
  BOTTOM: "BOTTOM",
}

This will give you the typical autocomplete:

The good thing about this that TypeScript will yell at you if you forget a field/value in your definition:

Using this workaround fixes @prisma/client being part of the bundle as you only import the type and not the constant.

[bennettdams]

I have the same problem, in my case with a Next.js app.

According to Next.js’ bundle analyzer, this adds ~13 KB to the client bundle:

@cawa-93 Would you mind adding something like “client bundle” to the issue title for better discoverability?

---

Additionally - and I haven’t tried this out yet - is this maybe also true for Prisma’s validator? You cannot destructure imports, so you’ll always have to import Prisma:

import { Prisma } from '@prisma/client'

const foo = Prisma.validator(...)