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Deploying a Database with render.com

Pricing and Registration

Register for an account at render.com

Pricing details are at:

Free Tier:

  • Details: https://render.com/docs/free#free-postgresql-databases
  • Render’s free database instance type allows you to run a PostgreSQL database that automatically expires 90 days after creation.
    • 💥 Free databases are suspended after 90 days (unless they are upgraded to a paid instance type), and are no longer reachable at this point.
    • You have a grace period of 14 days from suspension to upgrade a free database to a paid instance type.
    • All free databases are deleted (along with their data) after the grace period.
    • We will send you email notifications to alert you of upcoming free database expirations and deletions.
  • 💥 You can continue to create free PostgreSQL databases but only one free database can be active at a time.
  • Free! No credit card required.
    • Payment methods can be added to make DB permanent or access additional features/support.

Setup

Create a database

In general, you will want to create a new database for every application you deploy.

  • From the dashboard click the New + button to create a new database.
    • From the dropdown, select PostgreSQL
  • 📝 Use the web-form to configure your database:
    • Name: The name of your PostgreSQL instance (use the name of your app.)
    • Database: The name of your database; the same as what you would name your database in the pool.js file.
    • User: can be left empty
    • Region: Use Oregon (US West). (The region determines the physical location of the cloud service hardware, which impacts performance and latency.)
    • PostgreSQL Version: This should match whatever version you use to develop, which is likely the latest.
      • You can check in your terminal using the command psql --version
    • Datadog API Key: Leave this empty
    • Instance Type: Select Free

Connect to your database from Postico

You can use Postico to access your database, and run SQL queries against it.

  • Go to your dashboard
  • Select your Postgres Instance
  • From the info tab, scrill down to the section titled Connections

This section gives you all the information you need to connect to your database from Postico.

  • Click The Copy Button for External Database URL.

  • Open the Postico app

    • If you're already connected to a database, close your Postico window to disconnect

  • Click New Favorite, to setup the new connection to Render

    • If you've copyed the External Database URL, it will be pre-populated! You shouldnt need to do anything but check.
    • If you are using Postico 2, then you want Import From URL, and paste there.

  • In Postico, click Connect

You can now use Postico as usual. All your SQL commands will be sent to your render.com database, instead of the one running on localhost.

Setup your database: database.sql

Because you are a conscientious software engineer, you have kept all of your CREATE TABLE commands in a database.sql file, in your project repo. Connect to your render.com database in Postico, and run all those SQL commands, just as you have before.

Connect to your database from Heroku

Your Node.js app needs to know how to connect to your database. For this, we'll use a DATABASE_URL environment variable when we configure our pg.Pool.

This is a two step process:

  1. Set a DATABASE_URL environment variable on Heroku
  2. Update pool.js to use that DATABASE_URL variable to connect to postgres

Set the DATABASE_URL on Heroku

This setup assumes that your app is already deployed to heroku.

Your app code will run on a server hosted by Heroku (or a similar cloud service). This server will needs to have the DATABASE_URL set, so that your Node.js app will know how to connect to your database.

To get the value for the DATABASE_URL

  • Go to your render.com dashboard
  • Select your PostgreSQL instance
    • Select your PostgresInstance
  • Go to the Connections section and copy the External Database URL value
    • This should look something like: postgres://key:3rwA9UviR7tyxw7VoGMUqO8aGe8duzlw@dpg-chrmple7avj9vuf6698g-a.oregon-postgres.render.com/some_database_name

In a terminal, cd into your project folder. Then run:

heroku config:set DATABASE_URL=your_db_connection_string

💥 Replace your_db_connection_string with the actual value you copied from render.com!

Update pool.js to use DATABASE_URL

NOTE: If you're using a repo from a Prime assignment, your pool.js may already be setup for you!

Your pool.js file should look something like this:

// server/modules/pool.js
const pg = require('pg');
let pool;

// When our app is deployed to the internet 
// we'll use the DATABASE_URL environment variable
// to set the connection info: web address, username/password, db name
// eg: 
//  DATABASE_URL=postgresql://jDoe354:secretPw123@some.db.com/prime_app
if (process.env.DATABASE_URL) {
    pool = new pg.Pool({
        connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL,
        ssl: {
            rejectUnauthorized: false
        }
    });
}
// When we're running this app on our own computer
// we'll connect to the postgres database that is 
// also running on our computer (localhost)
else {
    pool = new pg.Pool({
        host: 'localhost',
        port: 5432,
        database: 'prime_feedback', 
    });
}

module.exports = pool;

If you had to change this file, commit and push your changes to Heroku:

git add .
git commit -m 'Update pool.js'
git push origin main
git push heroku main

Your app should now be able to connect to your render.com database. Open your app in a web browser to test it:

heroku open

Troubleshooting

If your app failed to deploy, you will see error messages when running git push heroku main.

If your app is deployed to Heroku but not running, or running with errors, check your app logs on heroku:

heroku logs --tail

You can use console.logs to help troubleshoot your code. eg.

// 💥 Remove this when you're done debugging! 
// 🔒 Logging secrets is a security risk.
console.log('What is my database URL?', process.env.DATABASE_URL);

Just remember to commit and push to heroku after writing your new console.logs.