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 Standalone Install 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
or5433
)
1. Install and configure PostgreSQL
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.
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
Go to the root directory of your freshly installed Backstage App. Run the following to install the PostgreSQL client into your backend:
yarn --cwd packages/backend add pg
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.
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,
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.POSTGRES_PORT
- The port to access your PostgreSQL database on. If you've installed PostgreSQL locally, this will be5432
or5433
.POSTGRES_USER
- The user from the SQL command above,postgres
.POSTGRES_PASSWORD
- The password you set in the SQL command above.
When filling these out, you have 2 choices,
- Use environment variables when you launch Backstage, either using an environment variable injector like
dotenv-cli
orenv-cmd
or loading the variables directly withEXPORT POSTGRES_...=...
. - 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.
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.
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.
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:
- Configuring Plugin Databases
- Read more about Knex, the database wrapper that we use.