Occasionally, I uncover long-standing but overlooked PostgreSQL features. One such rarely-used feature is "pg_service.conf," a file you can create to configure services. It simplifies access by eliminating the need to specify host, port, and user details.
How does it work? Well, here's an example:
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iMac:~ hs$ cat .pg_service.conf # a sample service |
[hansservice]
host=localhost port=5432 dbname=test user=hs password=abc
[paulservice]
host=192.168.0.45 port=5432 dbname=xyz user=paul password=cde
In this case two services have been defined. Note that PostgreSQL uses a standard .ini-file format. Inside a section you can use all connection parameters available in PostgreSQL (a full list can be found here: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.5/static/libpq-connect.html#LIBPQ-PARAMKEYWORDS).
The first important thing is that a service can be referenced by name. The way to do that is to set an environment variable:
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iMac:~ hs$ export PGSERVICE=hansservice |
A connection can now be established without passing parameters to psql:
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iMac:~ hs$ psql psql (9.5.0) Type 'help' for help. test=# |
Actually a pg_service.conf file is a pretty convenient thing to have. Maybe I should reconsider my behavior, and use this thing more often.
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Also, instead of
export PGSERVICEyou can swap services at psql invocation time in one line withPGSERVICE=myservice psqlEven better, I came up with adding this to my .bashrc:
pg() { PGSERVICE=$1 psql
}
you can also do "psql service=hansservice" because libpq accepts a connection string in the database name parameter.