Using Prisma and X.509 Authentication for MongoDB

This is a brief explanation of Prisma ORM, and how to support X.509 authentication without breaking Prisma require.

As a brief summary Prisma uses the following definition to accept a URI that is compliant with the provider when establishing the Prisma client.

PRISMA
1datasource db { provider = "mongodb" url = env("DATABASE_URL")}

When setting up MongoDB connections, the standard client authentication methods fall short. Unlike typical approaches, you can't simply pass a certificate object for authentication and encryption. After wrestling with sparse documentation, I discovered a straightforward solution: embedding the certificate file path directly in the connection URI.

ENV
1mongodb+srv://blog.vyuuj.mongodb.net/blog?
2authSource=%24external&authMechanism=MONGODB-X509
3&tls=true&tlsCertificateKeyFile=%5Cpath%5Cto%5Cyour%5Ccertificate.pem

Although this is not elegant, this can allow you to support X.509 certificates, without breaking Prisma.

In practice, storing certificate files permanently isn't recommended. Cloud platforms like Azure offer secure file management solutions that enable dynamic certificate handling. You can securely provision certificates at runtime, use them for database authentication, and then securely remove them after the connection is established.