Struggling with PostgreSQL setup for containerized setup

[wzzrd]

If anyone has some information on that, would it be possible to add an example Dockerfile to store trees (so not user databases or the search database, because that bit is easy) in a Postgres database, please? It is quite unclear how this is supposed to work for containerized setups for me...

[DavidMStraub]

Hi,

can you please specify at which point in the docs it becomes unclear? Any pull request to improve them would be very welcome.

[wzzrd]

Well, that document says to setup a Postgres database using a specific container image, but never talks about how to tell the API server in a different container how to connect to that database. It talks about importing an existing export, but afaics never about how to set up the full infrastructure.

The example docker-compose files have examples for redis - which is much less crucial than the postgres database - but does't have examples for a postgres database to store the tree.

I might be misunderstanding things, but I don't quite understand how my grampsweb setup is supposed to talk to a postgres database to store a tree, if I never configure that database. There is no env var for the tree database uri or something like that. Does that make more sense?

There are env vars for the search database uri, the user db uri, there is an env var for POSTGRES_USER, for POSTGRES_PASSWORD but there is no mention of POSTGRES_HOST or POSTGRES_PORT, or POSTGRES_URI, which one would expect.

If I understand how to set it up, I can for sure write a PR, but as of now, I can't make it work yet...

If you have a docker-compose that works to store the tree in Postgres, and you an anonymize and show me, I can work from there.

[DavidMStraub]

There are env vars for the search database uri, the user db uri, there is an env var for POSTGRES_USER, for POSTGRES_PASSWORD but there is no mention of POSTGRES_HOST or POSTGRES_PORT, or POSTGRES_URI, which one would expect.

Ouch. You're right.

Historical background: when https://www.grampsweb.org/install_setup/configuration/#settings-only-for-postgresql-backend-database was created, only the original Gramps PostgreSQL addon was supported, which requires you to set up the database externally (which is fiddly as well - see https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php/Addon:PostgreSQL). This is why there were only config options for user and pw existed.

Later, the SharedPostgreSQL addon was developed specifally for Gramps Web which also allows you to create databases from the API in a multi-tree setup. In that case, indeed there are POSTGRES_HOST and POSTGRES_PORT config options that are missing in the above settings docs.

[wzzrd]

Ah, ok, that brings me a step closer, I suppose. Thanks for your help!

I'm still fairly new in the Gramps world, so correct me if I'm wrong:

The docs for original PostgreSQL addon show how to configure that database in Gramps, not in Grampsweb. The doc indeed seems kind finicky :D

The SharedPostgreSQL add-on seems to be part of the grampsweb container image.

If I pass POSTGRES_HOST and POSTGRES_PORT (and I assume those should be GRAMPSWEB_POSTGRES_HOST, etc.) then I should make a manual API call to create a database?

Still not 100% how to proceed from here :) Do you happen to have a working example?

[DavidMStraub]

The SharedPostgreSQL add-on seems to be part of the grampsweb container image.

Correct.

If I pass POSTGRES_HOST and POSTGRES_PORT (and I assume those should be GRAMPSWEB_POSTGRES_HOST, etc.) then I should make a manual API call to create a database?

We have to distinguish between the single-tree setup and multi-tree setup (TREE="*").

• In the single-tree setup, it should be possible to specify a non-existing tree as TREE and a new tree will be created
• In the multi-tree setup, a tree is created via the API (POST to /api/trees/)

[wzzrd]

So, if I pass TREE="*" as an env var to the container, I get a multi-tree setup that I can further configure through the UI (assuming I have POSTGRES_HOST etc. set)?

Let me try that :)

[66tree]

So, if I pass TREE="*" as an env var to the container, I get a multi-tree setup that I can further configure through the UI (assuming I have POSTGRES_HOST etc. set)?

Let me try that :)

Did you ever figure out how to get multi-tree working with docker/postgres? Having trouble finding an example docker-compose.