Connecting Hasura to a DigitalOcean Postgres Database
Introduction
This guide explains how to connect a new or existing DigitalOcean Postgres database to a Hasura instance, either on Hasura Cloud or via one of our self-hosted solutions. If you're exploring DigitalOcean Postgres and are interested in migrating an existing Postgres database - such as from Heroku - check out their docs before continuing below.
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
Postgres Database URL. We'll create this in the next step and then come back here.
Step 3: Create a Postgres DB on DigitalOcean
Log into DigitalOcean.
On the top right, click the Create button. Then click on Databases:
Scroll down and choose a Cluster configuration, as well as a Datacenter based on your requirements.
Scroll to the bottom and choose a unique database cluster name. Also, select a project the new database will be associated with.
Then click Create a Database Cluster.
Step 4: Allow connections to your DB from Hasura
Navigate to the database cluster's Overview page:
Scroll down to Trusted sources and click the Edit button:
If you're using Hasura Cloud, you can quickly find your IP address from the Hasura Cloud IP field on the project's
details view:
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:
Then click Save.
If you're using a database user other than the default one, make sure to give it the right Postgres permissions.
Step 5: Get the database connection URL
The structure of the database connection URL looks as follows:
postgresql://<user-name>:<password>@<public-ip>:<postgres-port>/<db>?sslmode=require
To get it, navigate to the database cluster's Overview page:
Scroll down to Connection details. Select Public network on the left and Connection string on the right.
Then click the Copy button for the next step.
Step 6: Finish connecting the database
Back on the Hasura Console, enter the database URL that we retrieved in step 5:
Then click Connect Database.
For security reasons, it is recommended to set database URLs as env vars and using the env vars to connect to the databases in place of the raw database URLs.
Voilà. You are 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).
For more information on which Postgres features we support, check out this page.
