Getting Started with Postgres

Activate your server

If you haven't activated your postres server yet, see this page

Create your superuser password

On the Databases tab, find the "Postgres Superuser password" form and enter a password. Note the instructions re: it being stored in plaintext and needing to be different from your regular acount password

Create a database and user for your app

It's a bad idea to use the superuser account in your actual web app -- for security you want difffernt postgres user accounts for each of your applicatons.

Setting up a new database and user is quite straightforward though. Open a Postgres console from the databases tab, and then enter some commands like this, adjusting your username, database name, and password as appropriate:

CREATE DATABASE myappdb;

CREATE USER myappuser WITH PASSWORD 'a-nice-random-password';

ALTER ROLE myappuser SET client_encoding TO 'utf8';
ALTER ROLE myappuser SET default_transaction_isolation TO 'read committed';
ALTER ROLE myappuser SET timezone TO 'UTC';

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE myappdb TO myappuser ;

Make a note of your postgres configuration:

From the Databases tab:

  • Hostname (eg myusername-667.postgres.pythonanywhere-services.com)
  • Port (eg 10667)

From the Console session just now

  • User (eg myappuser)
  • Password (eg a-nice-random-password)

Example Configuration for Django:

DATABASES = { 'default': { 'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql', 'NAME': 'myappdb', 'USER': 'myappuser', 'PASSWORD': 'a-nice-random-password', 'HOST': 'myusername-667.postgres.pythonanywhere-services.com', 'PORT': 10667, } }

Set up regular backups

Do it now! Read this article for tips.