How to make connection to Postgres via Node.js

Question

Here is an example I used to connect node.js to my Postgres database.

The interface in node.js that I used can be found here https://github.com/brianc/node-postgres

var pg = require('pg');
var conString = "postgres://YourUserName:YourPassword@localhost:5432/YourDatabase";

var client = new pg.Client(conString);
client.connect();

//queries are queued and executed one after another once the connection becomes available
var x = 1000;

while (x > 0) {
    client.query("INSERT INTO junk(name, a_number) values('Ted',12)");
    client.query("INSERT INTO junk(name, a_number) values($1, $2)", ['John', x]);
    x = x - 1;
}

var query = client.query("SELECT * FROM junk");
//fired after last row is emitted

query.on('row', function(row) {
    console.log(row);
});

query.on('end', function() {
    client.end();
});



//queries can be executed either via text/parameter values passed as individual arguments
//or by passing an options object containing text, (optional) parameter values, and (optional) query name
client.query({
    name: 'insert beatle',
    text: "INSERT INTO beatles(name, height, birthday) values($1, $2, $3)",
    values: ['George', 70, new Date(1946, 02, 14)]
});

//subsequent queries with the same name will be executed without re-parsing the query plan by postgres
client.query({
    name: 'insert beatle',
    values: ['Paul', 63, new Date(1945, 04, 03)]
});
var query = client.query("SELECT * FROM beatles WHERE name = $1", ['john']);

//can stream row results back 1 at a time
query.on('row', function(row) {
    console.log(row);
    console.log("Beatle name: %s", row.name); //Beatle name: John
    console.log("Beatle birth year: %d", row.birthday.getYear()); //dates are returned as javascript dates
    console.log("Beatle height: %d' %d\"", Math.floor(row.height / 12), row.height % 12); //integers are returned as javascript ints
});

//fired after last row is emitted
query.on('end', function() {
    client.end();
});

UPDATE:- THE query.on function is now deprecated and hence the above code will not work as intended. As a solution for this look at:- query.on is not a function

A modern and simple approach: pg-promise:

const pgp = require('pg-promise')(/* initialization options */);

const cn = {
    host: 'localhost', // server name or IP address;
    port: 5432,
    database: 'myDatabase',
    user: 'myUser',
    password: 'myPassword'
};

// alternative:
// var cn = 'postgres://username:password@host:port/database';

const db = pgp(cn); // database instance;

// select and return a single user name from id:
db.one('SELECT name FROM users WHERE id = $1', [123])
    .then(user => {
        console.log(user.name); // print user name;
    })
    .catch(error => {
        console.log(error); // print the error;
    });

// alternative - new ES7 syntax with 'await':
// await db.one('SELECT name FROM users WHERE id = $1', [123]);

See also: How to correctly declare your database module.

Just to add a different option - I use Node-DBI to connect to PG, but also due to the ability to talk to MySQL and sqlite. Node-DBI also includes functionality to build a select statement, which is handy for doing dynamic stuff on the fly.

Quick sample (using config information stored in another file):

var DBWrapper = require('node-dbi').DBWrapper;
var config = require('./config');

var dbConnectionConfig = { host:config.db.host, user:config.db.username, password:config.db.password, database:config.db.database };
var dbWrapper = new DBWrapper('pg', dbConnectionConfig);
dbWrapper.connect();
dbWrapper.fetchAll(sql_query, null, function (err, result) {
  if (!err) {
    console.log("Data came back from the DB.");
  } else {
    console.log("DB returned an error: %s", err);
  }

  dbWrapper.close(function (close_err) {
    if (close_err) {
      console.log("Error while disconnecting: %s", close_err);
    }
  });
});

config.js:

var config = {
  db:{
    host:"plop",
    database:"musicbrainz",
    username:"musicbrainz",
    password:"musicbrainz"
  },
}
module.exports = config;

One solution can be using pool of clients like the following:

const { Pool } = require('pg');
var config = {
    user: 'foo', 
    database: 'my_db', 
    password: 'secret', 
    host: 'localhost', 
    port: 5432, 
    max: 10, // max number of clients in the pool
    idleTimeoutMillis: 30000
};
const pool = new Pool(config);
pool.on('error', function (err, client) {
    console.error('idle client error', err.message, err.stack);
});
pool.query('SELECT $1::int AS number', ['2'], function(err, res) {
    if(err) {
        return console.error('error running query', err);
    }
    console.log('number:', res.rows[0].number);
});

You can see more details on this resource.

Slonik is an alternative to answers proposed by Kuberchaun and Vitaly.

Slonik implements safe connection handling; you create a connection pool and connection opening/handling is handled for you.

import {
  createPool,
  sql
} from 'slonik';

const pool = createPool('postgres://user:password@host:port/database');

return pool.connect((connection) => {
  // You are now connected to the database.
  return connection.query(sql`SELECT foo()`);
})
  .then(() => {
    // You are no longer connected to the database.
  });

postgres://user:password@host:port/database is your connection string (or more canonically a connection URI or DSN).

The benefit of this approach is that your script ensures that you never accidentally leave hanging connections.

Other benefits for using Slonik include:

• Built-in assertions and type safety.
• Safe transaction handling.
• Safe value interpolation.
• Transaction nesting.
• Detail logging.
• Asynchronous stack trace resolution.