Create a Neon project and add data

Create a Neon account

If you do not have a Neon account, navigate to the Sign-in page and create an account using your GitHub or Google account.

Create a project

After you have signed in, click on Create a project. Enter the name of your project and select a region. We recommend selecting the region closest to your application or user location.

What happens behind the scenes

You may have noticed that your project was created in just a few seconds. That’s one of the benefits of Neon’s serverless architecture.

Neon is serverless PostgreSQL that separates compute and storage. Because a Neon compute node is a stateless PostgreSQL instance, Neon can provision one very quickly.

Neon also suspends a compute node if it is inactive for five minutes, to save on compute resources. This is Neon's scale-to-zero feature.

If you navigate to the Endpoints page in the Neon Console, you can view how an endpoint switches from an Active to an Idle states after a five minutes of inactivity. Active means that the compute node is running. Idle, on the other hand, means that the compute node is suspended.

Learn more about Neon’s architecture.

Create a table

This tutorial uses "shoe" data collected from Nike.com’s website using Nike’s API.

To create a table for the shoe data:

1. Navigate to the Neon Console.
2. Select your project.
3. Select SQL Editor from the sidebar.
4. Select a branch and a database. This tutorial uses the main branch and the default neondb database.
5. Enter the following query into the editor and click Run or use the shortcut ⌘+Enter.

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS shoes (
   id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
   brand VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
   model VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
   description VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
   color VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
   image VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL
);

The editor should report that the request ran successfully.

Insert data into the shoes table

In this step, you will add a row of data to the shoes table. In the SQL Editor, enter the following query:

INSERT INTO shoes ("brand", "model", "description", "color", "image") VALUES ('Nike', 'Air Zoom Alphafly', 'Men''s Road Racing Shoes', 'Scream Green/Bright Crimson/Honeydew/Black', 'https://static.nike.com/a/images/c_limit,w_400,f_auto/t_product_v1/c24ddc33-6e38-4cc9-b548-dc48cd3528ea/image.jpg');