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Database

Audience: Admins

Summary​

This guide walks through how to set up a PostgreSQL database to host your Backstage data. It assumes you've already have a scaffolded Backstage app from following the Creating your Backstage App guide.

By the end of this tutorial, you will have a working PostgreSQL database hooked up to your Backstage install.

Prerequisites​

This guide assumes a basic understanding of working on a Linux based operating system and have some experience with the terminal, specifically, these commands: apt-get, psql, yarn.

  • Access to a Linux-based operating system, such as Linux, MacOS or Windows Subsystem for Linux
  • An account with elevated rights to install prerequisites on your operating system
  • If the database is not hosted on the same server as the Backstage app, the PostgreSQL port needs to be accessible (the default is 5432 or 5433)

1. Install and Configure PostgreSQL​

Already configured your database?

If you've already installed PostgreSQL and created a schema and user, you can skip to Step 2.

Let's install PostgreSQL and get it set up for our Backstage app. First, we'll need to actually install the SQL server.

caution

The command below is for Linux. If you're not on Linux or having issues with package managers, check out how to install PostgreSQL to help you get sorted.

sudo apt-get install postgresql

To test if your database is working:

sudo -u postgres psql

You should see a very welcoming message, like:

psql (12.9 (Ubuntu 12.9-0ubuntu0.20.04.1))
Type "help" for help.

postgres=#

For this tutorial we're going to use the existing postgres user. The next step is to set the password for this user. You'll want to replace the <secret> with a real password in the command below. Keep note of the password you choose here, you'll need it later.

postgres=# ALTER USER postgres PASSWORD '<secret>';

That's enough database administration to get started. Type \q, followed by pressing the enter key. Then again type exit and press enter. Next, you need to install and configure the client.

2. Configuring Backstage pg Client​

Use your favorite editor to open app-config.yaml and add your PostgreSQL configuration in the root directory of your Backstage app using the credentials from the previous steps.

app-config.yaml
backend:
  database:
    client: better-sqlite3
    connection: ':memory:'
    # config options: https://node-postgres.com/apis/client
    client: pg
    connection:
      host: ${POSTGRES_HOST}
      port: ${POSTGRES_PORT}
      user: ${POSTGRES_USER}
      password: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}

The ${...} syntax denotes environment variables, specifically,

  1. POSTGRES_HOST - The URL/IP to access your PostgreSQL database at. If you've installed PostgreSQL locally, this will likely be 127.0.0.1.
  2. POSTGRES_PORT - The port to access your PostgreSQL database on. If you've installed PostgreSQL locally, this will be 5432 or 5433.
  3. POSTGRES_USER - The user from the SQL command above, postgres.
  4. POSTGRES_PASSWORD - The password you set in the SQL command above.

When filling these out, you have 2 choices,

  1. Use environment variables when you launch Backstage, either using an environment variable injector like dotenv-cli or env-cmd or loading the variables directly with EXPORT POSTGRES_...=....
  2. Replacing the entire ${POSTGRES_...} string with the value you identified earlier. This is the less secure option, but worth doing if you don't have much experience with environment variables.
danger

If you opt for the second option of replacing the entire string, take care to not commit your app-config.yaml to source control. It may contain passwords that you don't want leaked.

Start the Backstage app:

yarn dev

After the Backstage frontend launches, you should notice that nothing has changed. This is a good sign. If everything is setup correctly above, this means that the data is flowing from the demo data files directly into your database!

We've now made your data persist in your Backstage database.

Alternatives​

You may not want to install Postgres locally, the following sections outline alternatives.

Docker​

You can run Postgres in a Docker container, this is great for local development or getting a Backstage POC up and running quickly, here's how:

First we need to pull down the container image, we'll use Postgres 17, check out the Postgres Version Policy to learn which versions are supported.

docker pull postgres:17.0-bookworm

Then we just need to start up the container.

docker run -d --name postgres --restart=always -p 5432:5432 -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=<secret> postgres:17.0-bookworm

This will run Postgres in the background for you, but remember to start it up again when you reboot your system.

Docker Compose​

Another way to run Postgres is to use Docker Compose, here's what that would look like:

docker-compose.local.yaml
version: '4'

services:
  postgres:
    image: postgres:17.0-bookworm
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: postgres
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: <secret>
    ports:
      - 5432:5432

Then you would just run docker compose -f docker-compose.local.yaml up to start Postgres.

Next Steps​

We recommend you read Setting up authentication next.

Further Reading​

If you want to read more about the database configuration, here are some helpful links: