Database Setup

# Configure

Ensure that your system is running a PostgreSQL version of at least 9.4 or later.

If you’re using the postgres app on macOS, be sure to install CLI tools.

# Avram Configuration

Avram comes with an Avram::Credentials class for configuring your database credentials. This helps to catch incorrect settings at compile-time like malformatted usernames and such.

To configure Lucky to connect to your database, open up your config/database.cr file. You’ll find a few options within the AppDatabase configure block.

# Standard Options

Set the settings.credentials to Avram::Credentials.new and pass in these options:

database : String - This is the name of your database. The default is set at the top of this file.
hostname : String? - The host where your database is located. Generally “localhost”.
username : String? - Your database user.
password : String? - Your password.
port : Int32? - The port to connect to. Default is 5432
query : String? - A query string of connection pool settings.

# config/database.cr
AppDatabase.configure do |settings|
  settings.credentials = Avram::Credentials.new(
    database: database_name,
    hostname: "localhost",
    port: 5432,
    username: "postgres",
    query: "initial_pool_size=5&retry_attempts=2"
  )
end

On most systems, you can leave the password blank if your setup doesn’t require a password. If you wish to use password-less connections for local development, and leaving the password blank doesn’t work, please see Installing Postgres for more tips.

# Using Postgres connection string

Avram also supports using a standard connection string whether you want to use unix sockets or connect with credentials. For this, we can just set the environment variable DATABASE_URL (defined in config/database.cr) and parse it with Avram::Credentials.parse.

# This will raise an exception if `DATABASE_URL` is missing, or formatted incorrectly
settings.credentials = Avram::Credentials.parse(ENV["DATABASE_URL"])

# Note the use of "?". This will return nil if `DATABASE_URL` is missing.
settings.credentials = Avram::Credentials.parse?(ENV["DATABASE_URL"]?)

You can set this value in your .env file.

# Define your connection string
DATABASE_URL=postgres://myuser:somepass@localhost:5432/my_db?retry_attempts=2

# Or use a local unix socket
DATABASE_URL=postgres:///my_db

# Connection Pool

Lucky also supports connection pool settings:

initial_pool_size
max_pool_size
max_idle_pool_size
checkout_timeout
retry_attempts
retry_delay

To set the connection pool options, just set the query option in your Avram::Credentials to a query string. (e.g. query: "initial_pool_size=5&max_pool_size=10").

If using a connection string, set the query at the end. (e.g. postgres://postgres@localhost/my_db?initial_pool_size=5)

# Other Avram Options

Optionally, the lazy_load_enabled is set to false for development and test. This causes Lucky to raise an exception if you forget to preload an association, but will not raise an exception in production.

settings.lazy_load_enabled = LuckyEnv.production?

# Apps not using Avram

Avram requires a credentials option to be set. If you decide to not use Avram as your ORM, you can set this option to Avram::Credentials.void.

# An example can be found on this website's source
# https://github.com/luckyframework/website/blob/main/config/database.cr
AppDatabase.configure do |settings|
  # No database is required
  settings.credentials = Avram::Credentials.void
end

Avram.configure do |settings|
  settings.database_to_migrate = AppDatabase
end

# Test Setup

If you’d like to use separate credentials for your testing database, you can add another conditional in config/database.cr that checks for LuckyEnv.test? and sets the setting.url option to the appropriate value.

# Create and Drop database

# Create database

To create your database, run the lucky db.create task. This will create the database named from database_name in your config/database.cr file.

You can also run lucky db.setup to both create, and migrate your database in one task.

# Drop database

To drop the database, run the lucky db.drop

Please please don’t ever do this in production

# Seeding Data

Seeding is the process of putting data in to your database. This could be fake placeholder data you use in development, or even special data your application expects to exist in production.

By default, Lucky generates two tasks in your app’s tasks/ folder. Db::Seed::RequiredData, and Db::Seed::SampleData. You can use Factories or Operations to create the data.

# Required Seeds

Let’s say you’re getting ready to launch your application to production for the very first time. You may need an initial Admin user account that will be able to login and create your other Admin accounts.

This code will go in tasks/db/seed/required_data.cr.

def call
  # Using a Factory
  UserFactory.create &.email("developer@example.com").admin(true)

  # Using an Operation
  SaveUser.create!(email: "developer@example.com", admin: true)
end

Run this task with lucky db.seed.required_data.

This task should be ran after your first deployment, and whenever your seeds change. Running ./script/setup will run the db.seed.required_data task for you.

# Sample Seeds

This data is a great way to fill your development database with fake placeholder data to mimic a fully functioning production database without the worry of losing production data.

This code will go in tasks/db/seed/sample_data.cr.

def call
  # Using a Factory
  100.times do
    ProductFactory.create
  end

  # Using an Operation
  100.times do |i|
    SaveProduct.create!(name: "Product #{i}")
  end
end

Run this task with lucky db.seed.sample_data.

Running ./script/setup in development will run the db.seed.sample_data task for you. If you need to re-seed, you can run lucky db.drop and then ./script/setup to re-create and seed your local database.

# Multiple Databases

Avram supports a multi-database setup which you may need to use for connecting to a legacy db, or maybe doing a read/write replica setup.

By default, Lucky gives you the AppDatabase class for your primary DB. To add a second one, you’ll need to create a new class and inherit from Avram::Database.

# src/secondary_database.cr
class SecondaryDatabase < Avram::Database
end

Then require the file in src/app.cr:

# Add this right above the `require "./app_database.cr"`
require "./secondary_database.cr"

Next, you’ll need to add the connection info for the SecondaryDatabase.

# config/database.cr
SecondaryDatabase.configure do |settings|
  settings.credentials = Avram::Credentials.parse?(ENV["SECOND_DATABASE_URL"]?) || Avram::Credentials.new(
    database: "db_two",
    hostname: "localhost",
    username: "postgres",
    password: "postgres"
  )
end

Lastly, any models that need to use this database will need to define a class method def self.database with the database.

# src/models/legacy_user.cr
class LegacyUser < Avram::Model
  table :users do
  end

  def self.database
    SecondaryDatabase
  end
end

If you have many models that require connection to the SecondaryDatabase, you can make a SecondaryBaseModel class in src/models/secondary_base_model.cr and have those models inherit from that class.

# src/models/secondary_base_model.cr
abstract class SecondaryBaseModel < Avram::Model
  def self.database : Avram::Database.class
    SecondaryDatabase
  end
end

Require it in src/app.cr:

# Add this right above the `require "./models/base_model.cr"`
require "./secondary_base_model.cr"

Models can now inherit from this class:

class LegacyUser < SecondaryBaseModel
end

Note: migrations are ran against the AppDatabase. If you need to run migrations against another database, you’ll need to update the database_to_migrate option in config/database.cr

Next guide →Migrations

See a problem? Have an idea for improvement? Edit this page on GitHub