node server can't connect to postgres db

Question

I recently switched from MySQL to postgres as my database for an node.js project. While I'm able to reach my remote postgres database from my local pgAdmin III (OSX) client, so far I've been unable to connect to my database through node.js. I'm sure that the credentials I entered for pgAdmin and my node.js were exactly the same. The other thing I've tried was setting my local ipadress to trust in stead of md5 in the pg_hba.conf at my database server. Is there anything I did wrong? My favourite search engine came up with some worrying hits about resetting my local os. I just used the example from the github repo doc of node-postgres:

var pg = require('pg');

var conString = "postgres://myusername:mypassword@hostname:5432/dbname";

var client = new pg.Client(conString);
client.connect(function(err) {
  if(err) {
    return console.error('could not connect to postgres', err);
  }
  client.query('SELECT NOW() AS "theTime"', function(err, result) {
    if(err) {
      return console.error('error running query', err);
    }
    console.log(result.rows[0].theTime);
    client.end();
  });
});

And these are the errors I get every time I try to start my server:

could not connect to postgres { [Error: getaddrinfo ENOTFOUND] code: 'ENOTFOUND', errno: 'ENOTFOUND', syscall: 'getaddrinfo' }

Help would be greatly appreciated

Hm, what does a host hostname get you from the command line on that server? Is that one of its IPs, and does it listen to it? The error would seem the host does not know that it should be the 'hostname' you think it should be called... On a side note: I see only examples with postgres://, not pg://, I don't know if that matters... — Wrikken
– Wrikken, Commented Feb 12, 2014 at 22:26
Thanks for your reply Wrikken. The output for the db server is: Host hostname not found: 3(NXDOMAIN). The db server is a VPS. I supposed that shouldn't matter. — Dani
– Dani, Commented Feb 13, 2014 at 17:42
Well, so, I mean: the hostname you enter is... not the servers hostname? It tells you it cannot translate the name to an IP, so fails. So, enter the proper one perhaps (or go for localhost if you know it to be the same server the code is running on as mentioned in an answer below). If that also fails: try to give the proper IP address. — Wrikken
– Wrikken, Commented Feb 13, 2014 at 19:24
I tested it on the db server aswell. It appeared to be the password. Thanks for your Dutch help, your insights helped me get there — Dani
– Dani, Commented Feb 13, 2014 at 20:44
"Dutch help"? That's the first time I heard that phrase. As a Dutchman, I don't know what to think of it ;) — Wrikken
– Wrikken, Commented Feb 13, 2014 at 21:04

Dani · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-07 07:21:39Z

31

It appears that node-postgres doesn't accept a hashtag in your password. After removing the hashtag I was able to connect without a problem. Wouldn't have thought of that and it didn't strike me as a problem since pgAdmin accepted it.

The best solution would be to use encodeURIComponent to encode your password string. This would allow for hashtags to be used in the URL.

edited May 7, 2020 at 7:21

answered Feb 13, 2014 at 20:41

Dani

2,4988 gold badges30 silver badges44 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

5 Comments

Wrikken Over a year ago

Doh! Encode your password for urls of course ;) Nice to know it's been resolved.

Zaptree Over a year ago

Great thanks a lot. Just doing encodeURIComponent('passwordwith#') fixed the problem.

Tobias Fünke Over a year ago

Thanks - can't imagine ever finding this by debugging, probably would have given up!

Lucas Do Amaral Over a year ago

exactly my case. I use encodeURIComponent and the issue was resolved. thank you all for your help

mythicalcoder Over a year ago

character "#" in the password made it not connect.. Changed the password and node connected with db

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:34:23Z

1

The interface in node.js that I used can be found here https://github.com/brianc/node-postgres

var pg = require('pg');
var conString = "postgres://YourUserName:YourPassword@localhost:5432/YourDatabase";

try changing pg:// to postgres://

This was scraped from another stackoverflow article: How to make connection to Postgres via Node.js

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:34

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered Feb 13, 2014 at 1:26

matthew.peters

5814 silver badges6 bronze badges

1 Comment

Dani Over a year ago

I've tried that aswell, I changed the postgres:// to pg:// after postgres:// didn't work. Forgot to mention that

Daniel Bentes · Accepted Answer · 2023-01-10 11:51:12Z

0

I managed to solve this problem by removing the double quotes and the single quotes from the env_file in docker swarm, in this case, different from docker compose, docker swarm interprets everything that is written after the "=" in the envs, for example, replace this:

ENV='production'

for this:

ENV=production

answered Jan 10, 2023 at 11:51

Daniel Bentes

5384 silver badges11 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

node server can't connect to postgres db

3 Answers 3

5 Comments

1 Comment

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

3 Answers 3

5 Comments

1 Comment

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related