How to setup Rails3 postgres on mac

Update

A much better way to install Postgres locally is to use Postgres.app.

Do this and use the following commands to create your local root user (with no password) and database instance.

psql template1 -h localhost
CREATE USER root;
CREATE DATABASE <your db name>;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE <your db name> to root;
\q

=====================================

Wanting to align with Heroku I decided to setup a local instance of postgres.
It was more complicated than I would have liked, but here are some sketchy notes that might help if you need to go through the same thing.

Install postgres

$ brew install postgresql

After trying the EnterpriseDB one click deploy I found the homebrew install most stable.

Create Rails3 app with postgres as database

$ rails new pg -d postgres

Create new postgres database user

$ cd
$ sudo su postgres
Password:
$ createuser jr
$ Shall the new role be a superuser? (y/n) y
$ exit

if you get a getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Permission denied
just type ‘cd’ or ‘cd /’ and goto a directory where permissions aren’t an issue.

Create databases

$ sudo su postgres
Password:
$ psql template1
Password:

template1=# \l
template1=# CREATE DATABASE pg_development;
template1=# CREATE DATABASE pg_test;
template1=# \q

Login to terminal

$ psql -U postgres -d pg_development
Password:

config/database.yml

development:
adapter: postgresql
encoding: unicode
database: pg_development
pool: 5
username: postgres
password: root

test:
adapter: postgresql
encoding: unicode
database: pg_test
pool: 5
username: postgres
password: root

This was all setup and pre-populated. Only had to set username and password.

Test

$ rake db:create
$ rails generate scaffold Post name:string title:string content:text
$ rake db:migrate

Should be good to go. If you run into problems let me know and I will try to keep this up to do.

kill hanging postgres processes

Sometimes I have to manually kill postgres instances when I do a redeploy.
Pattern I follow is:
> db.sh (rebuild database)
> sudo kill -9
> manually restart server using pgadmin
> restart local rails server

– it’s a pain and I will update this when I find a better way

stackoverflow
postgres

Links that helped
http://www.funonrails.com/2011/03/getting-started-with-rails-3-postgres.html
http://www.mcbsys.com/techblog/2011/10/set-up-postgresql-for-rails-3-1/
http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/local-postgresql#macintosh