Finding database migrations painful to work with? Switching contexts a chore? Pull requests piling up? pgsh
helps by managing a connection string in your .env
file and allows you to branch your database just like you branch with git.
There are only a couple requirements:
- your project reads its database configuration from the environment
- it uses a
.env
file to do so in development.
See dotenv for more details, and The Twelve-Factor App for why this is a best practice.
Language / Framework | .env solution |
Maturity |
---|---|---|
javascript | dotenv | high |
python (django) | django-dotenv | unknown |
pgsh can help even more if you use knex for migrations.
yarn global add pgsh
to make thepgsh
command available everywherepgsh init
to create a.pgshrc
config file in your project folder, beside your.env
file (seesrc/pgshrc/default.js
for futher configuration)- You can now run
pgsh
anywhere in your project directory (trypgsh -a
!) - It is recommended to check your
.pgshrc
into version control. Why?
There are two different ways pgsh can help you manage your current connection (mode
in .pgshrc
):
url
(default) when one variable in your.env
has your full database connection string (e.g.DATABASE_URL=postgres://...
)split
when your.env
has different keys (e.g.PG_HOST=localhost
,PG_DATABASE=myapp
, ...)
pgsh init
generates a.pgshrc
file for your project.pgsh url
prints your connection string.pgsh psql <name?> -- <psql-options...?>
connects to the current (or named) database with psqlpgsh current
prints the name of the database that your connection string refers to right now.pgsh
orpgsh list <filter?>
prints all databases, filtered by an optional filter. Output is similar togit branch
. By adding the-a
option you can see migration status too!
Read up on the recommended branching model for more details.
pgsh clone <from?> <name>
clones your current (or thefrom
) database as name, then (optionally) runsswitch <name>
.pgsh create <name>
creates an empty database, then runsswitch <name>
and optionally migrates it to the latest version.pgsh switch <name>
makes name your current database, changing the connection string.pgsh destroy <name>
destroys the given database. This cannot be undone. You can maintain a blacklist of databases to protect from this command in.pgshrc
pgsh dump <name?>
dumps the current database (or the named one if given) to stdoutpgsh restore <name>
restores a previously-dumped database as name from stdin
pgsh provides a slightly-more-user-friendly interface to knex's migration system.
-
pgsh up
migrates the current database to the latest version found in your migration directory. -
pgsh down <version>
down-migrates the current database to version. Requires your migrations to havedown
edges! -
pgsh force-up
re-writes theknex_migrations
table entirely based on your migration directory. In effect, running this command is saying to knex "trust me, the database has the structure you expect". -
pgsh force-down <version>
re-writes theknex_migrations
table to not include the record of any migration past the given version. Use this command when you manually un-migrated some migations (e.g. a bad migration or when you are trying to undo a migration with missing "down sql"). -
pgsh validate
compares theknex_migrations
table to the configured migrations directory and reports any inconsistencies between the two.