Cloudflare D1 Database

Status: Production Ready ✅ Last Updated: 2025-10-21 Dependencies: cloudflare-worker-base (for Worker setup) Latest Versions: wrangler@4.43.0, @cloudflare/workers-types@4.20251014.0

Quick Start (5 Minutes)

1. Create D1 Database

# Create a new D1 database
npx wrangler d1 create my-database

# Output includes database_id - save this!
# ✅ Successfully created DB 'my-database'
#
# [[d1_databases]]
# binding = "DB"
# database_name = "my-database"
# database_id = "<UUID>"

2. Configure Bindings

Add to your wrangler.jsonc:

{
  "name": "my-worker",
  "main": "src/index.ts",
  "compatibility_date": "2025-10-11",
  "d1_databases": [
    {
      "binding": "DB",                    // Available as env.DB in your Worker
      "database_name": "my-database",      // Name from wrangler d1 create
      "database_id": "<UUID>",             // ID from wrangler d1 create
      "preview_database_id": "local-db"    // For local development
    }
  ]
}

CRITICAL:

• binding is how you access the database in code (env.DB)
• database_id is the production database UUID
• preview_database_id is for local dev (can be any string)
• Never commit real database_id values to public repos - use environment variables or secrets

3. Create Your First Migration

# Create migration file
npx wrangler d1 migrations create my-database create_users_table

# This creates: migrations/0001_create_users_table.sql

Edit the migration file:

-- migrations/0001_create_users_table.sql
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS users;
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS users (
  user_id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
  email TEXT NOT NULL UNIQUE,
  username TEXT NOT NULL,
  created_at INTEGER NOT NULL,
  updated_at INTEGER
);

-- Create index for common queries
CREATE INDEX IF NOT EXISTS idx_users_email ON users(email);

-- Optimize database
PRAGMA optimize;

4. Apply Migration

# Apply locally first (for testing)
npx wrangler d1 migrations apply my-database --local

# Apply to production when ready
npx wrangler d1 migrations apply my-database --remote

5. Query from Your Worker

// src/index.ts
import { Hono } from 'hono';

type Bindings = {
  DB: D1Database;
};

const app = new Hono<{ Bindings: Bindings }>();

app.get('/api/users/:email', async (c) => {
  const email = c.req.param('email');

  try {
    // ALWAYS use prepared statements with bind()
    const result = await c.env.DB.prepare(
      'SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = ?'
    )
    .bind(email)
    .first();

    if (!result) {
      return c.json({ error: 'User not found' }, 404);
    }

    return c.json(result);
  } catch (error: any) {
    console.error('D1 Error:', error.message);
    return c.json({ error: 'Database error' }, 500);
  }
});

export default app;

D1 Migrations System

Migration Workflow

# 1. Create migration
npx wrangler d1 migrations create <DATABASE_NAME> <MIGRATION_NAME>

# 2. List unapplied migrations
npx wrangler d1 migrations list <DATABASE_NAME> --local
npx wrangler d1 migrations list <DATABASE_NAME> --remote

# 3. Apply migrations
npx wrangler d1 migrations apply <DATABASE_NAME> --local   # Test locally
npx wrangler d1 migrations apply <DATABASE_NAME> --remote  # Deploy to production

Migration File Naming

Migrations are automatically versioned:

migrations/
├── 0000_initial_schema.sql
├── 0001_add_users_table.sql
├── 0002_add_posts_table.sql
└── 0003_add_indexes.sql

Rules:

• Files are executed in sequential order
• Each migration runs once (tracked in d1_migrations table)
• Failed migrations roll back (transactional)
• Can't modify or delete applied migrations

Custom Migration Configuration

{
  "d1_databases": [
    {
      "binding": "DB",
      "database_name": "my-database",
      "database_id": "<UUID>",
      "migrations_dir": "db/migrations",        // Custom directory (default: migrations/)
      "migrations_table": "schema_migrations"   // Custom tracking table (default: d1_migrations)
    }
  ]
}

Migration Best Practices

✅ Always Do:

-- Use IF NOT EXISTS to make migrations idempotent
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS users (...);
CREATE INDEX IF NOT EXISTS idx_users_email ON users(email);

-- Run PRAGMA optimize after schema changes
PRAGMA optimize;

-- Use transactions for data migrations
BEGIN TRANSACTION;
UPDATE users SET updated_at = unixepoch() WHERE updated_at IS NULL;
COMMIT;

❌ Never Do:

-- DON'T include BEGIN TRANSACTION at start (D1 handles this)
BEGIN TRANSACTION;  -- ❌ Remove this

-- DON'T use MySQL/PostgreSQL syntax
ALTER TABLE users MODIFY COLUMN email VARCHAR(255);  -- ❌ Not SQLite

-- DON'T create tables without IF NOT EXISTS
CREATE TABLE users (...);  -- ❌ Fails if table exists

Handling Foreign Keys in Migrations

-- Temporarily disable foreign key checks during schema changes
PRAGMA defer_foreign_keys = true;

-- Make schema changes that would violate foreign keys
ALTER TABLE posts DROP COLUMN author_id;
ALTER TABLE posts ADD COLUMN user_id INTEGER REFERENCES users(user_id);

-- Foreign keys re-enabled automatically at end of migration

D1 Workers API

Type Definitions

// Add to env.d.ts or worker-configuration.d.ts
interface Env {
  DB: D1Database;
  // ... other bindings
}

// For Hono
type Bindings = {
  DB: D1Database;
};

const app = new Hono<{ Bindings: Bindings }>();

prepare() - Prepared Statements (PRIMARY METHOD)

Always use prepared statements for queries with user input.

// Basic prepared statement
const stmt = env.DB.prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE user_id = ?');
const bound = stmt.bind(userId);
const result = await bound.first();

// Chained (most common pattern)
const user = await env.DB.prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = ?')
  .bind(email)
  .first();

Why use prepare():

• ✅ Prevents SQL injection
• ✅ Can be reused with different parameters
• ✅ Better performance (query plan caching)
• ✅ Type-safe with TypeScript

Query Result Methods

.all() - Get All Rows

const { results, meta } = await env.DB.prepare(
  'SELECT * FROM users WHERE created_at > ?'
)
.bind(timestamp)
.all();

console.log(results);  // Array of rows
console.log(meta);     // { duration, rows_read, rows_written }

.first() - Get First Row

// Returns first row or null
const user = await env.DB.prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = ?')
  .bind('user@example.com')
  .first();

if (!user) {
  return c.json({ error: 'Not found' }, 404);
}

.first(column) - Get Single Column Value

// Returns the value of a specific column from first row
const count = await env.DB.prepare('SELECT COUNT(*) as total FROM users')
  .first('total');

console.log(count);  // 42 (just the number, not an object)

.run() - Execute Without Results

// For INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE
const { success, meta } = await env.DB.prepare(
  'INSERT INTO users (email, username, created_at) VALUES (?, ?, ?)'
)
.bind(email, username, Date.now())
.run();

console.log(meta);  // { duration, rows_read, rows_written, last_row_id }

batch() - Execute Multiple Queries

CRITICAL FOR PERFORMANCE: Use batch() to reduce latency.

// Prepare multiple statements
const stmt1 = env.DB.prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE user_id = ?').bind(1);
const stmt2 = env.DB.prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE user_id = ?').bind(2);
const stmt3 = env.DB.prepare('SELECT * FROM posts WHERE user_id = ?').bind(1);

// Execute all in one round trip
const results = await env.DB.batch([stmt1, stmt2, stmt3]);

console.log(results[0].results);  // Users query 1
console.log(results[1].results);  // Users query 2
console.log(results[2].results);  // Posts query

Batch Behavior:

• Executes sequentially (in order)
• Each statemen