Getting Started

This page shows you how to create a Sliplane database and connect to it from your application in the fastest way.

Create a database

To create a database, follow these steps:

1. In the Sliplane dashboard, go to Databases.

2. Click Create Database.

3. Choose a name, region, compute size, and storage size. See Pricing for what each option costs.

4. Click Create Database.

Your database is ready to use once it finishes provisioning which takes around 30 seconds. Open it to find its connection details.

Connect to your database

You can connect to your database using any PostgreSQL client, including command-line tools, language drivers, and graphical clients. All connections to Sliplane databases support TLS encryption. For protection against man-in-the-middle attacks, connect with sslmode=verify-full, which validates our certificate and hostname.

Configure the environment

The fastest way to connect to your database is to use the Connection URI, which contains all the information needed to connect.

postgres://jonas:pAsSworD123@xxxxxx.sliplane.app:1234/mydb?sslmode=verify-full&sslrootcert=system
           ^     ^           ^                   ^    ^
     user -|     |           |- host       port -|    |- database
                 |
                 |- password

Copy the Connection URI from the Sliplane dashboard where your database is located and set it as an environment variable DATABASE_URL.

Linux or macOS

export DATABASE_URL="postgres://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/DATABASE?sslmode=verify-full&sslrootcert=system"

Windows Command Prompt

setx DATABASE_URL "postgres://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/DATABASE?sslmode=verify-full&sslrootcert=system"

PowerShell

$Env:DATABASE_URL="postgres://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/DATABASE?sslmode=verify-full&sslrootcert=system"

Quick starts

With the environment variable in place, you can connect from the psql CLI, any PostgreSQL driver, or ORMs. Here are a few examples to get you started.

psql

# Connect to your database
psql "$DATABASE_URL"

# Or run a single query
psql "$DATABASE_URL" -c "SELECT version();"

JS (pg)

Caution

Please remove sslrootcert=system from the connection URI and configure DATABASE_URL again, as pg does not recognize that parameter and will throw an error. sslrootcert=system is pg’s default behavior.

import { Client } from "pg"

const client = new Client({ connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL })
await client.connect()

const { rows } = await client.query("SELECT * from pg_stat_ssl")
console.log(rows[0]) // { ssl: true, ... }

await client.end()

JS (postgres)

Caution

Please remove sslrootcert=system from the connection URI and configure DATABASE_URL again, as postgres.js does not recognize that parameter and will throw an error. sslrootcert=system is postgres.js’s default behavior.

import postgres from "postgres"

const client = postgres(process.env.DATABASE_URL)

const [ ssl ] = await client`SELECT * from pg_stat_ssl`
console.log(ssl) // { ssl: true, ... }

await client.end()

Drizzle

Caution

Please remove sslrootcert=system from the connection URI and configure DATABASE_URL again, as postgres.js does not recognize that parameter and will throw an error. sslrootcert=system is postgres.js’s default behavior.

import { drizzle } from "drizzle-orm/postgres-js"
import { sql } from "drizzle-orm"
import postgres from "postgres"

const client = postgres(process.env.DATABASE_URL)
const db = drizzle(client)

const result = await db.execute(sql`SELECT * from pg_stat_ssl`)
console.log(result[0]) // { ssl: true, ... }

await client.end()

Python

import os
import psycopg

with psycopg.connect(os.environ["DATABASE_URL"]) as conn:
    with conn.cursor() as cur:
        cur.execute("SELECT version()")
        print(cur.fetchone())

Go

package main

import (
    "context"
    "fmt"
    "os"

    "github.com/jackc/pgx/v5"
)

func main() {
    ctx := context.Background()

    conn, _ := pgx.Connect(ctx, os.Getenv("DATABASE_URL"))
    defer conn.Close(ctx)

    var version string
    conn.QueryRow(ctx, "SELECT version()").Scan(&version)
    fmt.Println(version)
}

Java

Caution

JDBC URL is different from the common PostgreSQL URI format. To connect, you need to construct the connection string with the host, port, database, user, and password separately, and set sslmode to verify-full together with sslfactory set to org.postgresql.ssl.DefaultJavaSSLFactory so the driver validates our certificate against the JVM’s trusted CAs.

Linux or macOS

export PGHOST="YOUR_DATABASE_HOST"
export PGPORT="YOUR_DATABASE_PORT"
export PGDATABASE="DATABASE_NAME"
export PGUSER="USERNAME"
export PGPASSWORD="PASSWORD"

Windows Command Prompt

setx PGHOST YOUR_DATABASE_HOST
setx PGPORT YOUR_DATABASE_PORT
setx PGDATABASE DATABASE_NAME
setx PGUSER USERNAME
setx PGPASSWORD PASSWORD

PowerShell

$Env:PGHOST="YOUR_DATABASE_HOST"
$Env:PGPORT="YOUR_DATABASE_PORT"
$Env:PGDATABASE="DATABASE_NAME"
$Env:PGUSER="USERNAME"
$Env:PGPASSWORD="PASSWORD"

import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.DriverManager;
import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.Statement;
import java.util.Properties;

public class HelloPostgres {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        String url = String.format(
            "jdbc:postgresql://%s:%s/%s",
            System.getenv("PGHOST"),
            System.getenv("PGPORT"),
            System.getenv("PGDATABASE"));

        Properties props = new Properties();
        props.setProperty("user", System.getenv("PGUSER"));
        props.setProperty("password", System.getenv("PGPASSWORD"));
        props.setProperty("sslmode", "verify-full");
        props.setProperty("sslfactory", "org.postgresql.ssl.DefaultJavaSSLFactory");

        try (Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(url, props);
            Statement stmt = conn.createStatement();
            ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("SELECT * FROM pg_stat_ssl;")) {
            if (rs.next()) {
                System.out.println(rs.getString("ssl")); // "t"
            }
        }
    }
}

Detailed guides

The following table lists the official documentation for popular PostgreSQL drivers and ORMs.

Language or framework	Library
JavaScript / TypeScript	node-postgres (pg)
JavaScript / TypeScript	postgres.js
JavaScript / TypeScript	Drizzle ORM
JavaScript / TypeScript	Prisma ORM
Python	psycopg
Go	pgx
Java	PostgreSQL JDBC Driver
.NET	Npgsql
Ruby	pg gem
PHP	PDO_PGSQL
Rust	sqlx / tokio-postgres
Laravel	Eloquent PostgreSQL driver
Django	django.db.backends.postgresql

Connect with a GUI

Prefer a graphical client? Follow one of these quickstarts to connect with your database’s connection details.

pgAdmin Connect to your database with pgAdmin, the official PostgreSQL admin tool.

CloudBeaver Connect to your database with CloudBeaver, a browser-based database client.

n8n Connect to your database with n8n, the open-source workflow automation tool.

Metabase Connect to your database with Metabase, an open-source business intelligence tool.