running on Heroku

[andyvb]

Have you tried running your adapter on Heroku? Out of the box you end up needing to modify the Heroku config variable DATABASE_URL to use the 'postgis' adapter. Wondering if you had any suggestions on how to do this without editing the DATABASE_URL, so things like heroku pg:promote still works.

[nodrog]

as far as i know you cannot use postgis on heroku currently, they have not included the pg extension, although they are doing some testing, you can email them to add a beta service to your database.

[dazuma]

Unfortunately, I can't support Heroku right now, as I don't use them, nor do I have any immediate plans to use them. If someone else knows how to set it up, and wants to send me a pull request to improve the integration, that would be great, but it's not something I can solve myself.

I'll leave this issue open for the time being.

[nodrog]

An update...

There is company that have a heroku add-on https://addons.heroku.com/spacialdb

and heroku have a beta version of postgis running for any dedicated database http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/is-postgis-available

[WearyMonkey]

We have been running on Heroku successfully using the beta postgis addon.

To create the schema we connected to the heroku database from a locally running instance of our rails app, so the rake task could access the required postgis schema files.

Then we changed the DATABASE_URL Heroku env variable (using 'heroku config') to use the postgis adapter instead of postgres, e.g. 'postgis://...'

A downside is the the pgbackups addon doesn't work after changing the DATABASE_URL.

[quartzmo]

Thanks WearyMonkey, changing DATABASE_URL also worked for me, I appreciate you posting.

[softwaregravy]

We're also running on Heroku with no problems

resolve issue?

[peteonrails]

+1 for closing the issue. Heroku should provide a command to properly promote PostGIS enabled databases to DATABASE_URL, but there's nothing to change in activerecord-postgis-adapter here. For posterity's sake, you don't need to create the schema from a local instance if you create the PostGIS extension on Heroku using psql first. It'll correctly install the spatial reference system and such without needing the SQL files.

[dazuma]

Ideally we don't want to have to modify DATABASE_URL since, as some commenters have pointed out, some of the addon tasks (like backup, which is pretty important!) don't work unless the schema is postgres://.

I'm actually working with one of the Heroku engineers now on a solution. We may be able to get that to land in the next couple weeks. I'll keep this open until then.

[quarterdome]

@dazuma, agree that ideally DATABASE_URL should not be modified. I am wondering why did you decide to call the adapter something else in database.yml (postgis) instead of just piggy backing on the existing postgres (like what https://github.com/nofxx/postgis_adapter did)?

My thinking is that PostGIS is just an extension to PostgreSQL, and changing an adapter name for each extension one uses won't scale (e.g. what if one day you use two extensions?). I was chatting with @pvh at Heroku during their Waza conference about it, and he had some good ideas how to handle that. Perhaps you guys should connect?

[quarterdome]

Another indication that changing an adapter name may not be good idea is that as of now running rails dbconsole produces an error:

avalanche:postgis_on_rails matt$ rails db
Unknown command-line client for postgis_on_rails_development. Submit a Rails patch to add support!

[softwaregravy]

@dazuma @quarterdome Holy $#&!. I did not realize that changing from postgres to postgis would break heroku backups. I haven't been doing backups in months. Thanks for pointing this out. This is a big one

[WearyMonkey]

To fix the backups problem, we monkey patched the database_configuration method by adding the below code to application.rb. Then left DATABASE_URL as the default. Neither an elegant or permanent solution, but works and might help people who want both backups and postgis to work right now before a proper fix is released.

# add to application.rb application class
# override the adapter setting to 'postgis' as heroku DATABASE_URL must be
# set to postgres
def config.database_configuration
  parsed = super
  parsed.each_value { |config| config['adapter'] = 'postgis' }
end

[softwaregravy]

@WearyMonkey Thanks

[pvh]

hey guys! yeah, please don't override the protocol. it's still postgres,
and the postgres://blahblahblah/ URL format is now accepted by libpq and
ultimately we'll work on getting everyone standardized on that in the
future.

On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 5:57 PM, John Hinnegan notifications@gh.neting.ccwrote:

@WearyMonkey https://github.com/WearyMonkey Thanks

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/14#issuecomment-15435157
.

[hgmnz]

Here's another approach. You can throw this in an initializer:

Rails.application.config.after_initialize do
  ActiveRecord::Base.connection_pool.disconnect!

  ActiveSupport.on_load(:active_record) do
    config = Rails.application.config.database_configuration[Rails.env]
    config['adapter'] = 'postgis'
    ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(config)
  end
end

[softwaregravy]

@hgmnz I couldn't get that to work. Maybe a rails version issue?

@WearyMonkey Your approach is working for me. Thanks.

[bricestacey]

@hgmnz I couldn't get your suggestion to work either. I'm using Rails 4 rc1 and latest master on activerecord-postgis-adapter. Says "could not connect to server: No such file or directory. Is the server running locally and accepting connections on Unix domain socket"

Got it working for now by modifying the DATABASE_URL's schema as @WearyMonkey suggested.

[softwaregravy]

@WearyMonkey This worked for us on Rails 3.1 it is now broken on Rails 3.2 :(

[WearyMonkey]

@softwaregravy We're currently using the monkey patch approach from my previous comment on Rails 3.2.11 and it's working fine.

[softwaregravy]

@WearyMonkey Thanks. We just went from 3.1 to 3.2.13. We are switching to the solution suggested by @hgmnz above which seems to be working in testing.

[smidwap]

Has anyone gotten this working on Rails 4? Both monkey patches aren't working. A peak at the Rails code shows that so long as ENV["DATABASE_URL"] is defined, all other config (database.yml and monkey patch additions) will be ignored.

[smidwap]

To get Heroku to see use the postgis adapter on Rails4, I had to add the following funky monkey patch to application.rb (the main config file):

module ActiveRecord
  class Base
    def self.establish_connection(spec = ENV["DATABASE_URL"].try(:gsub, "postgres", "postgis"))
      super(spec)
    end
  end
end

This substitutes "postgres" in DATABASE_URL with "postgis".

[tompesman]

I'm running into the same problems on Heroku. Heroku advises to use unicorn and you should reconnect to the database after the fork, undoing the reconnect @hgmnz suggests. This reconnect is needed for the rake/console tasks, but for unicorn you need to adjust the unicorn.rb file.

worker_processes 4
timeout 30
preload_app true

before_fork do |server, worker|

  Signal.trap 'TERM' do
    puts 'Unicorn master intercepting TERM and sending myself QUIT instead'
    Process.kill 'QUIT', Process.pid
  end

  defined?(ActiveRecord::Base) and ActiveRecord::Base.connection.disconnect!
end

after_fork do |server, worker|

  Signal.trap 'TERM' do
    puts 'Unicorn worker intercepting TERM and doing nothing. Wait for master to sent QUIT'
  end

  if defined?(ActiveRecord::Base)
    config = Rails.application.config.database_configuration[Rails.env]
    config['adapter'] = 'postgis'
    ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(config)
    Rails.logger.info('Connected to ActiveRecord')
  end
end

With both solutions in place there are multiple reconnects to the database. Probably the monkey patch of @smidwap will work for both unicorn and rake/consoles, but I'm not a bug fan of the monkey patches.

[SubaruWRX55]

what's about @WearyMonkey suggestion? Seems pretty elegant to me

[hgmnz]

@SubaruWRX55 I'd advice against modifying DATABASE_URL yourself. The reason is that then we (Heroku Postgres) lose the ability to change it without breaking your app.

Reasons to change it include

• Catastrophic hardware failure and consequent migration to new host,
• Credentials rotation, initiated by you (eg: heroku pg:credentials --reset) - surely you want the ability to rotate creds on a regular basis.

Further, as was pointed out earlier on this thread, without a valid postgres URL, logical backups (pgbackups) will not be taken (although your data is safe by means of our continuous archiving).

[anthonator]

Just curious, is there any reason why this gem was written with it's own adapter? Other postgres extensions that I use (postgres_ext and activerecord-postgres-hstore) just extend the postgres adapter.

[tompesman]

I was also curious and made fork and changed the postgis adapter name to postgresql. It seems to work. There's still some work to do in the databases.rake files. It's just a test.

tompesman/activerecord-postgis-adapter@dca1776

[christopherdbull]

Has anyone got this working on Rails 4? This is causing me some serious pain currently as Rails refuses to use the correct DB adapter and breaks everything Geo (throwing No Function Matches the Given Name errors).

[futuretap]

Both patches by @WearyMonkey and @tompesman don't work for me. The database connection is apparently set to postgis correctly (ActiveRecord::Base.connection_config[:adapter] says postgis) but when accessing a geometry column, all I get from the database is an Integer. When I set the DATABASE_URL to postgis, the app works fine. Does the switch from postgres to postgis occur too late in the initialization process perhaps?

I'm on Rails 3.2.13.

[smidwap]

@futuretap have you tried the monkey patch I used? Scroll up or #14 (comment)

[futuretap]

@smidwap it is already self.establish_connection in your code. The crash occurs in the super call. Not sure how I could modify that to call through to the original Rails code?

[smidwap]

Hm where did you place this code? It could be that you placed it before the ActiveRecord module is loaded. I had to put it in application.rb

[futuretap]

@smidwap I have it in application.rb. I tried to put it both before and after the module MyApp block.

[tompesman]

@futuretap if you have other postgis related parts in your database.yml, you can add them also in the initializer.

config['postgis_extension'] = 'postgis'
config['schema_search_path'] = 'public, postgis'

[smidwap]

@futuretap did some more digging. The issue has to do with my fowl treatment of super() in this case. I'm on Ruby 2 which may treat super differently. Anyways try this:

module ActiveRecord
  class Base
    class << self
      alias :monkey_patched_establish_connection :establish_connection

      def monkey_patched_establish_connection(spec = ENV["DATABASE_URL"].try(:gsub, "postgres", "postgis"))
        establish_connection(spec)
      end
    end
  end
end

[futuretap]

@smidwap, @tompesman thanks for your suggestions. I tried both solutions and at least they load fine. But alas the problem isn't fixed. When I access a geometry column, it's read as a number. Interestingly, there's a

SELECT * FROM geometry_columns WHERE f_table_name='pois'

in the log when accessing it. So the PostGIS driver seems to be at work. But it returns a Fixnum instead of an RGeo object.

Here's the full backtrace (my latitude method returns lat of my Geometry column):

NoMethodError: undefined method `lat' for 101000020:Fixnum
    from /app/app/models/poi.rb:185:in `latitude'
    from (irb):6
    from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/railties-3.2.13/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:47:in `start'
    from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/railties-3.2.13/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:8:in `start'
    from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/railties-3.2.13/lib/rails/commands.rb:41:in `<top (required)>'
    from script/rails:6:in `require'
    from script/rails:6:in `<main>'

As soon as I change DATABASE_URL to postgis everything works fine.

[christopherdbull]

@bricestacey yep I got it working eventually too. Had an unrelated issue it turns out that was breaking things. I imported my database from an old server to heroku and the way it setup postgis was different. When I manually built the database and imported the old data it worked. Still have a couple of issues but the recommended heroku way works for me with Puma (threaded and forked) and ruby 2.0.0 on rails 4

[mattsprig]

For those like myself who are still having trouble, Heroku has published a devcenter article with a clear workaround: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/postgis

Credit goes to @catsby for his comment on this pull request #57

[abatko]

Has anyone got this working with phusion passenger?

• rails 4.0.5
• ruby 2.0.0p481
• rgeo 0.3.20
• rgeo-activerecord 1.0.0
• passenger 4.0.42
• PostgreSQL 9.3.4
• POSTGIS 2.1.1 r12113

[abatko]

The May 29, 2013 solution presented by @smidwap did the trick for me. I placed it at the bottom of config/application.rb but it also worked placed just above Bundler.require(:default, Rails.env). Note that I also have the class ActiveRecordOverrideRailtie < Rails::Railtie block as presented in Heroku's Setting up PostGIS with Rails docs. According to my tests, the ActiveRecordOverrideRailtie block does indeed have to be in config/application.rb, because if placed in config/initializers/postgis.rb (for example) the initializer does not get called.

[mikeatlas]

I'm on puma here, and still had problems getting the on_load hook to use the right adapter:

ActiveSupport.on_load(:active_record) do
    config = Rails.application.config.database_configuration[Rails.env]
    config['reaping_frequency'] = ENV['DB_REAP_FREQ'] || 10 # seconds
    config['pool']              = ENV['DB_POOL'] || 20
    config['adapter']           = 'postgis'
    ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(config)
end

As a side note, I also use resque, and this is in my resque.rb initializer:

Resque.after_fork do
    if defined?(ActiveRecord::Base)
        config = ActiveRecord::Base.configurations[Rails.env]
        config ||= Rails.application.config.database_configuration[Rails.env]
        config['adapter']           = 'postgis'
        ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(config)
    end
end

It seems that the only workaround for me was to update DATABASE_URL to use postgis:// like in the original post. The heroku article suggesting that you can change the adapter on load/boot with initializers still wasn't quite good enough to work in my case.

[omphe]

I got this working successfully on Heroku with the following in my puma.rb

on_worker_boot do
  if defined?(ActiveRecord::Base)
    config = ActiveRecord::Base.configurations[Rails.env] ||
        Rails.application.config.database_configuration[Rails.env]
    config['adapter'] = 'postgis'
    ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(config)
  end
    end

on_restart do
  if defined?(ActiveRecord::Base)
    config = ActiveRecord::Base.configurations[Rails.env] ||
        Rails.application.config.database_configuration[Rails.env]
    config['adapter'] = 'postgis'
    ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(config)
  end
end

[blackjid]

This looks like a very old issue, but it's still a problem. I'm using rails 4.1.16 and activerecord-postgis-adapter 2.x

This has been working for me, in the url property in the database.yml file I just replace the adapter before passing it to the configuration:

# config/database.yml
production:
  ...
  url: <%= ENV.fetch("DATABASE_URL", "").gsub(/postgres/, 'postgis') %>

[Drowze]

I am using the same setup @blackjid which is working flawlessly so far.

I really would like not to version database.yml though, since it contains the local database credentials (it was on my .gitignore) so I am not that happy with the solution.
What I am doing right now is pushing simply what is needed to heroku and then running git update-index --assume-unchanged config/database.yml, so I can edit it with no much trouble, though trying to checkout old branches that had no database.yml present had led me to some trouble 😢

[softwaregravy]

@Drowze The recommended way to set up your database.yml is to use environment variables that are set in your config. This issue is specifically concerning Heroku, so I'll refer you to the configs. https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/config-vars

Your database.yml shouldn't contain any production credentials.

[mjy]

Perhaps we need a wiki with current standards/gotchas/setup information on Heroku? Maybe someone who uses it can stepup and confirm their setup so we can close this issue?

At minimum we could 1) start a Heroku wiki page and two cross-reference to this closed issue?

[keithdoggett]

I've set up this wiki that just cross-references this.

If someone wants to make a proper wiki with the info @mjy mentioned that would be great, but I'm going to close the issue now.

[gagalago]

After having again this issue, I just update quickly the wiki. feel free to continue to improve it 🎉