Working on a rails app locally with a remote Postgres connection? - ruby-on-rails

Question

Is there a way to configure the database.yml file to connect to Heroku's Postgres remotely?
I'm having trouble understanding how Heroku, Rails and PG gem work together.
It looks like during deployment, Heroku re-writes the database.yml file - is it possible to see the contents of this updated .yml file and use it locally?

Answer 1

Below are the steps to access Heroku db from local development:
Login to your heroku account.
Navigate to this URL https://postgres.heroku.com/databases/ OR you can get heroku db url by running this command in the terminal: heroku pg:credentials:url
Select your application database.
You will able to see your heroku pg credentials:
Host xxxxxxxxx.77777.amazonaws.com
Database 42feddfddeee
Username 44444444444
Port xxxx
Password 777sfsadferwefsdferwefsdf
collect above details and put in your databse.yml file development evn:
adapter: postgresql
host: < host > # HOST
port: < port > # Port
database: < database name > # Database Name
username: < user_name > # User Name
password: '< password >' # Password
Restart you application,
Best of luck..!!

Answer 2

I am not a postgres user but this should work.
You can alter your database.yml to include host and port
production:
adapter: postgresql
encoding: unicode
database: di_production
pool: 5
username: user
password:
host: heroku.host.name
port: <postgres listen port>
And of course, you should allow connection on the server side, both at the firewall level and database level.
A simple hack to see contents of #{Rails.root}/config/database.yml is to write code to load this yml into an object, then print it out on the UI
DB_CONFIG = YAML.load(File.read("#{Rails.root}/config/database.yml", __FILE__))
puts DB_CONFIG["production"].inspect # or what ever method you want to print it

Answer 3

I am a bit of a newbie and may have misunderstood your question - but. Developed a ROR application using postgress database. Then uploaded to Heroku. I ran DB/Migrate/schema.rb to set up the remote Postgresql database.
From memory heroku run rake db:init (but I could be wrong). Whenver I update the database in develpment to get update in Heroku I have to promote code and run heroku run rake db:migrate
From my config/dtabase.yml
development:
adapter: postgresql
encoding: unicode
database: di_development
pool: 5
username: davidlee
password:
test:
adapter: postgresql
encoding: unicode
database: di_test
pool: 5
username: davidlee
password:
production:
adapter: postgresql
encoding: unicode
database: di_production
pool: 5
username: user
password:
and it works. I can't remember doing anything else.
Pierre