This short guide will install PostgreSQL database on your local Ruby on Rails development environment.

The database will be placed in vendor/postgres* folder depending on your PostgreSQL version.

Create the database

Find out your local PostgreSQL version

$ postgres --version
postgres (PostgreSQL) 14.2

Create local database for Postgres

$ pg_ctl init -D vendor/postgresql<version>

Setup database superuser

Start PostgreSQL on another terminal. You have to have PostgreSQL running in order to perform the following steps.

$ postgres -D vendor/postgresql14.2/
2022-06-11 09:10:20.723 EEST [43595] LOG:  starting PostgreSQL 14.2 on aarch64-apple-darwin21.3.0, compiled by Apple clang version 13.0.0 (clang-1300.0.29.30), 64-bit
2022-06-11 09:10:20.725 EEST [43595] LOG:  listening on IPv6 address "::1", port 5432
2022-06-11 09:10:20.725 EEST [43595] LOG:  listening on IPv4 address "127.0.0.1", port 5432
...
...

Log in to PostgreSQL

$ psql -p 5432 -h localhost -d postgres

Create Superuser in Postgres

$ CREATE USER postgres SUPERUSER;
$ \quit

Setup databaser user for your project

Create portal user for local development and use password password12.

$ createuser localdev -d -P -s

Setup database configuration on Ruby on Rails

Depending on your PostgreSQL access control configuration, you might need to username and password configuration to your config/database.yml file.

# config/database.yml

...
...

development:
  ...

  # Add these two lines
  username: localdev
  password: password12
  ...

test:
  ...

  # Add these two lines
  username: localdev
  password: password12
  ...

Create databases for development and test environments

Run Rails task to create the databases. If you see following output, databases for development and test environments were created successfully.

$ rails db:create
Created database '<rails_project_name>_development'
Created database '<rails_project_name>_test'

Add PostgreSQL to your Procfile.dev

Add the following line to Procfile.dev

# Procfile.dev

db: postgres -D vendor/postgresql<version>

Configure Git to ignore the development databases

Add this following line to .gitignore and commit it to your repository. This way your database will not be commited to the git repository.

# .gitignore

/vendor/postgres*

The Last Step

Finally, start your Rails development engine and you’re good to go!

$ bin/dev