Connecting Hasura to a Google Cloud SQL for MySQL Database

Introduction

This guide explains how to connect a new or existing Google Cloud SQL for MySQL database to a Hasura instance, either on Hasura Cloud or via one of our self-hosted solutions.

Hasura Cloud or self-hosted steps

If you plan on using Hasura Cloud, which we recommend, follow steps 1 and 2 below. If you're self-hosting a Hasura instance and already have a project running, skip to step 3.

Step 1: Sign up or log in to Hasura Cloud

Navigate to Hasura Cloud and sign up or log in.

Step 2: Create a Hasura Cloud project

On the Hasura Cloud dashboard, create a new project:

After the project is initialized successfully, click on Launch Console to open the Hasura Console in your browser.

On the Hasura Console, navigate to the Data tab and choose Connect Existing Database. Hasura will prompt you for a JDBC URL. We'll create this in the next step and then come back here.

Step 3: Create a MySQL DB on Google Cloud SQL

Already have an existing database?

If you have an existing MySQL database on Google Cloud SQL, you can skip this step and move on to step 4.

Log into the GCP console.

On the left-side navigation, scroll down to Storage and click on SQL:

On the top, click on Create instance:

Select MySQL:

Select an instance ID, as well as a default user password. Choose a preset, and, if required, a specific region and zone.

Then click Create Instance.

Step 4: Allow connections to your DB from Hasura

On the dashboard of your Google Cloud SQL database instance, on the left sidebar, click on Connections and then the Networking tab. Then scroll down to the checkbox Public IP, and click Add a network:

If using Hasura Cloud, from your project's dashboard, copy the Hasura Cloud IP address:

Note

If you're using a self-hosted solution, you'll need to determine the IP address manually depending on your hosting service.

Enter the Hasura IP address that you copied along with a name (e.g., Hasura):

Then click Done and Save.

Step 5: Construct the database connection URL

The structure of the database connection URL looks as follows:

jdbc:mysql://<hostname>:<port>/<database_name>?user=<username>&password=<password>

• port: The default port for MySQL is 3306 if not specified otherwise.
• database_name: The name is mysql by default unless otherwise specified.
• username: If you have a separate database user, the username will be theirs. If you didn't specify a user, the default username is root.
• password: If you have a separate database user, use their password. Otherwise, use the password that you chose when creating the database.
• hostname: The public IP can be obtained by clicking on Overview on the left-side navigation and then scrolling down to Connect to this instance:

About Cloud SQL connections

If you're having trouble creating your connection string, check out Google Cloud SQL's docs.

Step 6: Finish connecting the database

Back on the Hasura Console, enter the database URL that we created in step 5:

Then click Connect Database.

Database URL security

It is recommended to set database connection URLs as env vars in Hasura Engine instead of raw database URLs which would be saved to metadata and likely committed to a repository which may be a security risk.

Ensure your password escapes special characters

Due to the potential variations in drivers, it's crucial to escape special characters used in the password of the connection string. These include { } % & #. To escape a character, use the appropriate escape sequence based on your database's driver's documentation.

Track the tables on which you want to create your API, and voilà: you're ready to start developing.

Next steps

• You can check out our 30-Minute Hasura Basics Course and other GraphQL & Hasura Courses for a more detailed introduction to Hasura.

• If using Hasura Cloud, you can also click the gear icon to manage your Hasura Cloud project. (e.g. add collaborators, env vars or custom domains).

MySQL feature support

For more information on which MySQL features we support, check out this page.

Auth Proxy

Google Cloud SQL offers a Cloud SQL Auth proxy that can be used to connect to your database. This is useful if you want to connect to your database from a local machine or a server that doesn't have a public IP address.

To use the Cloud SQL Auth proxy, follow the instructions in the Cloud SQL Auth proxy docs.