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Database Configuration
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Database

Database Configuration

Pop configuration is managed by a database.yml file, located at the root of your project. This file is generated for you if you use Buffalo – if you choose to use Pop – and contains a basic configuration for the database you selected on generation with the --db-type flag. PostgreSQL is considered as the default.

Here is a sample configuration generated for a new app based on PostgreSQL:

development:
  dialect: postgres
  database: myapp_development
  user: postgres
  password: postgres
  host: 127.0.0.1
  pool: 5

test:
  url: {{envOr "TEST_DATABASE_URL" "postgres://postgres:postgres@127.0.0.1:5432/myapp_test"}}

production:
  url: {{envOr "DATABASE_URL" "postgres://postgres:postgres@127.0.0.1:5432/myapp_production"}}

You can see three connections defined:

  • development is the one used when your app runs on dev mode.
  • test serves to run the integration tests.
  • production is the config you’ll use on the final app, on the server.

Of course, you can configure any new connection you want, but Buffalo won’t pick them by default.

Generator

Note for Buffalo users: soda commands are embedded into the buffalo command, behind the pop namespace. So every time you want to use a command from soda, just execute buffalo pop instead.

You can generate a default configuration file using the init command:

$ soda g config

The default will generate a database.yml file in the current directory for a PostgreSQL database. You can override the type of database using the -t flag and passing in any of the supported database types: postgres, cockroach, mysql, or sqlite3.

Config File Location

The Pop configuration file – database.yml – can be found either:

  • At your project root (default).
  • In the config/ directory, at your project root.

If you want to put your config file in another location, you can use the AddLookupPaths.

You can also customize the file name:

pop.ConfigName = "my_pop_config.yml"

Env vs Detailed Configuration

Note that the database.yml file is also a Go template, so you can use Go template syntax. There are two special functions that are included, env and envOr.

As you can see, you have two ways to configure a new connection:

  • The one used by the development connection is the most detailed. It allows you to set each available parameter, one by one.
  • The one used by the test and production connections is a bit different: it uses a variable (see the {{ }} marks?) to set the value, and the envOr helper.

The envOr helper tries to get a value from an environment variable, and default to the second value. For instance:

envOr "TEST_DATABASE_URL" "postgres://postgres:postgres@127.0.0.1:5432/myapp_test"

Tries to get the TEST_DATABASE_URL value from environment, and defaults to postgres://postgres:postgres@127.0.0.1:5432/myapp_test.

This way, you can provide a default value for development purposes, and allow to reconfigure the database settings from an environment variable!

The url param for a connection will override any other connection param. Make sure you set all the settings you want from the URL string.

For additional details, check the documentation for github.com/gobuffalo/pop.

Make sure you have configured this file properly before working with Pop!

Available Options

database

The name of the database to use.

dialect

The database dialect to use with the connection. Accepted values are:

  • MySQL driver: “mysql”
  • PostgreSQL driver: “postgres”, “postgresql” or “pg”
  • Cockroach driver: “cockroach”, “cockroachdb” or “crdb”
  • SQLite driver: “sqlite” or “sqlite3”

driver

Since 4.11.2

Use this option to customize the database driver and override the default one used by Pop.

Here is the list of the default SQL drivers:

encoding

Since 4.6.0

This option is currently only supported by the mysql dialect. This encoding will be used to create the database (if you create it using soda), and as the collation parameter for the connection string. If this option is omitted, the default value is utf8mb4_general_ci.

development:
  dialect: mysql
  options:
    encoding: "utf8_general_ci"

host

The database host address to connect to.

password

The password for the user you use to connect to the database.

port

The database host port for the database.

Defaults:

Driver Port
PostgreSQL 5432
MySQL 3306
Cockroach 26257

user

The user to use to connect to the database.