Edit

Switching Backstage from SQLite to PostgreSQL

The default @backstage/create-app database is SQLite, an in-memory database that's perfect for initial experimentation as it requires no environment setup.

Once you're ready to deploy Backstage in production, or to have a more persistent development setup, you can switch the Backstage database to PostgreSQL.

Backstage uses the Knex library, making it fairly easy to switch between database backends.

Install PostgreSQL

First, add PostgreSQL to your backend package:

# From your Backstage root directory
cd packages/backend
yarn add pg

Add PostgreSQL configuration

Next, modify app-config.yaml in the root folder to add PostgreSQL configuration for the backend:

backend:
  database:
-    client: sqlite3
-    connection: ':memory:'
+    # config options: https://node-postgres.com/api/client
+    client: pg
+    connection:
+      host: ${POSTGRES_HOST}
+      port: ${POSTGRES_PORT}
+      user: ${POSTGRES_USER}
+      password: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
+      # https://node-postgres.com/features/ssl
+      #ssl: require # see https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/libpq-ssl.html Table 33.1. SSL Mode Descriptions (e.g. require)
+        #ca: # if you have a CA file and want to verify it you can uncomment this section
+        #$file: <file-path>/ca/server.crt

If you have an app-config.local.yaml for local development, a similar update should be made there. You can set the POSTGRES_ environment variables prior to launching Backstage, or remove the ${...} values and simply set actual values directly for development.

The Backstage App is now ready to start up with a PostgreSQL backing database.