I'm working on a Rails app with a few collaborators and we decided to begin using separate database.yml files for some time until we can a configuration that works for all of us.
After adding database.yml to the .gitignore file and pushing a version without it, I realized that this would likely prevent the Heroku app from running.
My confusion is that the deployment was successful and the database.yml file was not needed. Why is this? Is our old database.yml file cached?
This is actually the expected behavior. For more details see: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/rails-database-connection-behavior
Which boils down to (for Rails 4.1+):
While the default connection information will be pulled from
DATABASE_URL, any additional configuration options in your
config/database.yml will be merged in.
Heroku will always use DATABASE_URL and merge the rest from database.yml to the config contained in that url.
Ah yes the old db config developer war.
Heroku actually uses the solution to this issue - Rails merges the database configuration from database.yml with a hash created from parsing ENV["DATABASE_URL"]. The ENV var takes precedence over the file based configuration.
When you first push a Rails app, Heroku automatically attaches a Postgres addon and sets ENV["DATABASE_URL"] and presto your app magically connects to the database.
Even if you add complete nonsense settings like setting the database name in database.yml the ENV var still wins.
How can this solve our developer war?
Do the opposite of what you are currently doing. Strip everything except the bare minimum required to run the application out of database.yml and check it back into version control.
Developers can use direnv or one of the many tools available to set ENV[DATABASE_URL] to customize the settings while database.yml should be left untouched unless you actually need to tweak the db.
Related
I am jumping into an existing project, and the local database.yml file does not include staging. I was transferring some files with capistrano linked files, and it pushed up the databasel.yml by default.
Now when deploying to staging I get the error
ActiveRecord::AdapterNotSpecified: 'staging' database is not configured. Available: ["default", "development", "test", "production"]
I have no idea to find out the password to the staging database since no previous developers are here. They must have edited this file directly on staging, since I don't see it in the git history, and my 5 past releases don't seem to include it either (I must have pushed things up since it was overwritten).
If I add a staging db to the database.yml will it override the data that is there now? It is staging so it is not the biggest deal in the world, but it would be a big pain and I want to try to fix this issue without overriding the data.
I am using Postgres.
Any tips on how I can get this back in order would be super appreciative.
I am assuming if this staging env is previously used, it must have the database creds on database.yml for the active record to save/retrieve data accordingly. You can try logging in as root in your staging sql and you can reset password for your staging database(assuming you have root creds).
If not, and you can't possibly get the database info, I believe you can point your staging to a new database if loss of data is tolerable.
When I deploy a new app to nginx using Capistrano.
I follow tutorial to do git mv database.yml database.yml.example and git mv secrets.yml secrets.yml.example , then created a new database.yml file on remote server. But now when I want to run app on my local mechine, it shows me an error
No such file - ["config/database.yml"]
Because there is no database.yml on my local repo.
Can I create an new and empty database.yml to fix this?
The guide just tells you that storing database credentials in a repository is bad practice and you shouldn't do it, but it doesn't mean you don't need to have this files at all.You application still needs it, so you definitely need to create it, just don't store it in main repo with code, this security critical information is better to store it elsewhere you decide to keep your authentification data like separate repository for credentials, key-pass storage or whatever place you want for such critical information.
PS Of course, if you just learning since it's not a big deal, you COULD keep your "root-123" credits in repository, but it's better to develop right habit from the beginning or at least get the idea why it should be separated.
I'm working in a team in a Rails project.
Each of us have a local database for development purpose. We have a problem: Everyone have different configuration for the local database. When someone make a commit without reset the /config/database.yml the other members of the team can't use their database because the access is not configured.
Can I have a local configuration not commited? To each one can works without problem and without the need of re-set the file every time? Sometime like the local_settings.py in Django
You can configure the database in Rails via both the config/database.yml file and the DATABASE_URL env var. They are merged but settings from DATABASE_URL take precedence.
A good solution is to check in the config/database.yml with a basic configuration thats just enough to support postgres.app or whatever is the most common solution.
Developers that need other settings can set the DATABASE_URL env var to customize the database configuration. Gems like figaro and dotenv make this easier.
If you have ever wondered this how Heroku manages to use the correct DB no matter what you throw into database.yml and the DATABASE_URL ENV var is how you should be configuring your production DB.
Why should I use ENV vars and not more database_*.yaml files?
The twelve-factor app stores config in environment variables (often
shortened to env vars or env). Env vars are easy to change between
deploys without changing any code; unlike config files, there is
little chance of them being checked into the code repo accidentally;
and unlike custom config files, or other config mechanisms such as
Java System Properties, they are a language- and OS-agnostic standard.
https://12factor.net/config
Add config/database.yml in to the .gitignore file at root path of your rails-app.
Copy config/database.yml with the values you need for production into config/database_example.yml.
Now you can modify your local database and in production you copy config/database_expample.yml to config/database.yml
If the config file is ignored by git, everyone can change it locally without getting tracked by git.
EDIT:
HERE YOU SEE HOW YOU CAN REMOVE FILE FROM TRACKING!!!
Ignore files that have already been committed to a Git repository
I have a Rails 4 app version controlled with git.
I would like to have a version of database.yml on my server that never changes. What's the best way to allow me to continue to edit this file locally, without changing the remote database.yml file?
You should include your local version of database.yml in .gitignore, so that it's not in the repository and won't change with subsequent deployments.
For instance, in your application root, create a ".gitignore" file and add the following in:
config/database.yml
You can also hide entire directories:
config/*
Basic shell wildcard syntax will work.
*.sql
Etc.
Take it out of version control, it shouldn't be there anyway.
We don't track our config/database.yml in version control (we do track a sample file so it's easier to get setup on new development machines). Our deployment script symlinks in a custom database.yml that's stored in the application user's home directory with permissions set to "600". This way the app user is the only user that can see the database password, and we don't have to do anything manual on deploy.
move database.yml to some secure folder, like /etc/config/database.yml and then create symlink
of that file with rails database.yml after deployment but before starting server.
We have inherited a Rails project hosted on Heroku. The problem is that I don't understand how to get a copy of the database.yml or other various config files that have been ignored in the .gitignore file.
Sure I can look through the history but it seems like a hip shot when comparing it to what should be on the production server. Right now we are having to make changes to the staging environment which makes things a bit arduous and less efficient than having a local dev environment so we can really get under the hood. Obviously, having an exact copy of the config is a good place to start.
With other hosts it's easy to get access to all the files on the server using good ol' ftp.
This might be more easily addressed with some sort of git procedure that I am less familiar with.
Heroku stores config variables to the ENV environment
heroku config will display these list of variables
heroku config:get DATABASE_URL --app YOUR_APP
Will return the database url that Heroku as assigned to your app, using this string one can deduce the parameters necessary to connect to your heroku applications database, it follows this format
username:password#database_ip:port/database_name
This should provide you with all the values you'll need for the heroku side database.yml, its a file that is created for you each time you deploy and there is nothing it that can't be gotten from the above URL.
gitignoring the database.yml file is good practice
It's not something you can do - entries added to .gitignore means they've been excluded from source control. They've never made it into Git.
As for database.yml you can just create the file in app\config\database.yml with local settings, it should look something like;
development:
adapter: postgresql
host: 127.0.0.1
username: somelocaluser
database: somelocaldb
It's safe to say though, that if the file is not in Git then it's not on Heroku since that's the only way you can get files to Heroku. Any config is likely to be in environment variables - heroku config will show you that.