Set postgres database url on travis-ci for testing node.js application - node.js

Question

I have written some tests for my node.js application and the tests are running locally using a Postgresql test database.
When I run my test script, npm run test, the environment is set to test and when this happens, the database connection string is set for the test database and my queries in the application are now done on the test database. Like so:
let connectionString;
if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'test') {
connectionString =`postgresql://${process.env.DB_USER}:${process.env.DB_PASS}#${process.env.DB_HOST}:${process.env.DB_PORT}/${process.env.TEST_DB_NAME}`;
} else {
connectionString =`postgresql://${process.env.DB_USER}:${process.env.DB_PASS}#${process.env.DB_HOST}:${process.env.DB_PORT}/${process.env.DB_NAME}`;
}
This way my tests are being run on the test database.
On travis however, I know I am going to need to further configure its own database. On the travisCI docs, I read about how I could set up a PostgreSQL database here, but this doesn't help me because how do I get the full database URL as above? On travisCI, what am I to use as my database hostname or port and how do I set this value inside my code?
How do I set the database connection string and access it in my code?
Thanks for any ideas.

Answer 1

Found this while searching of how to do the exact same thing, and this didn't answer my question, so in case anyone else comes across it, I think I have solved it.
zerosand1s kind of answered it, but there seems to be nowhere online which actually says what the hostname or port should be (maybe I'm being dumb and this is obvious but :shrug:)
As per the psql docs:
Defaults to the value of the PGPORT environment variable or, if not set, to the port specified at compile time, usually 5432.
So I guessed port would be 5432 (you could probably just use PGPORT as your variable).
Also elsewhere on travis, it says local host will bind to 127.0.0.1 for other databases (eg. mongo) so I took a guess on that too.
Travis docs tell us the user as postgres and password is blank.
I was using the whole string to connect, where as you split it up, so as such I set my entire connection string as (you can extract each component):
postgres://postgres#127.0.0.1:5432/testing_db
I did this on the travis dashboard settings.
Amazingly all of this worked :tada:
Hope this helps.

Answer 2

As per docs, you can create a database using before_scriptlike so
before_script:
- psql -c "CREATE DATABASE testing_db;" -U postgres
then you can add your database credentials (along with database name and port etc) to travis environment variables like so
travis encrypt DB_USER=TEST_DB_USER --add env.matrix
You can find more on travis environment variables here. You can also add environment variables on travis dashboard under your repository settings.