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) 14.8

Create local database for Postgres

$ pg_ctl init -D vendor/postgresql<version>

Create the database inside your Ruby on Rails project

Start PostgreSQL on your terminal. After you have it running, open another terminal window and perform the other steps.

$ postgres -D vendor/postgresql14.2/
2023-08-19 18:09:38.097 EEST [22144] LOG:  starting PostgreSQL 14.8 (Homebrew) on aarch64-apple-darwin22.4.0, compiled by Apple clang version 14.0.3 (clang-1403.0.22.14.1), 64-bit
2023-08-19 18:09:38.099 EEST [22144] LOG:  listening on IPv6 address "::1", port 5432
2023-08-19 18:09:38.099 EEST [22144] LOG:  listening on IPv4 address "127.0.0.1", port 5432
2023-08-19 18:09:38.099 EEST [22144] LOG:  listening on Unix socket "/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432"
2023-08-19 18:09:38.101 EEST [22145] LOG:  database system was shut down at 2023-08-19 18:09:35 EEST
2023-08-19 18:09:38.102 EEST [22144] LOG:  database system is ready to accept connections
...
...

Setup database users for your project

Create a superuser for your database

$ createuser postgres -s

Create an user for your local development and use password password.

$ createuser localdev -d -P

Setup database configuration on Ruby on Rails

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

# config/database.yml

...
...

development:
  ...

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

test:
  ...

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

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