What's the proper way of using Postgres connections in Node? - node.js

I was wondering if anyone can help me understand what the proper way of maintaining multiple connections to multiple postgres servers via https://github.com/brianc/node-postgres is.
Obviously when running a node server for long duration we want to make sure we keep everything clean with no leaks and so I am wondering what the proper pattern is.
Please remember that my Node server will need to connect to 7-8 Postgres servers.
https://github.com/brianc/node-postgres supports the idea of pools. I am wondering: do I just connect to all servers on initial Node server set up and maintain open connections and each function can ask for a pool when it needs to talk to a server?
In other words, am I supposed to call pg.connect every time I make a server query? (minus the var pg and var connectionString which could be global)
Can't I just have a single connection be on and ready?
var pg = require('pg');
var connectionString = "pg://brian:1234#localhost/postgres"
pg.connect(connectionString, function(err, client, done) {
client.query('SELECT name FROM users WHERE email = $1', ['brian#example.com'], function(err, result) {
assert.equal('brianc', result.rows[0].name);
done();
});
});
Code snippets are greatly appreciated.

Related

Opening less connections with rethinkDB

My question is; Can i have less connections open when using rethindb? Right now I'm opening a new one every time I want to insert or get some data. Im afraid that this is not a right thing to do. Is there any way I can open just one and use it instead? I'm using nodejs.
Yes. You can run multiple queries on a connection. That's the recommended way of doing things.
The best way is to use connection pool. For nodejs, for example, we are using rethinkdb-pool.
I havent looked into the opensource connection pools for rethink, but I have a node app that uses rethink, and it will have a limited number of users, So I save my one connection to rethink as a global var and then use it for all queries.
'use strict';
var r = require('rethinkdb);
var rethinkConnect = null;
r.connect(
{
'host': 'localhost',
'port': '28015',
'password': 'noneya',
},
function(err, conn) {
if (err) {
console.log(err);
} else {
rethinkConnect = conn;
}
}
);
Now all queries the node.js server makes can use the connection. Keep in mind this code is async so you could not immediately make a query the next line after r.connect(). You could, however, use the payload of an inbound socket.io event as the params of a rethink query.
I'd advise you to use rethinkdbdash, an "advanced Node.js RethinkDB driver" that includes connection pools and some other advanced features. It has many more stars and contributors than rethinkdb-pool.

Handing MongoDB connection issues from Node (Express)

I have an Express App which connects to a MongoDB server at startup and serves requests on-demand (I don't disconnect - it's a single threaded server so no pooling - fairly simple stuff)
Problem is that it's possible the MongoDB server will be unavailable for periods of time (it's not on-site) and whilst the Express App doesn't crash, it seems that any requests made to the server will run indefinately until the connection is restored!
I'd like to limit that (e.g. throw an error back after a period of time) but I can't seem to make that happen...
I'm using connect options "{server: {auto_reconnect: true}}" which seems to ensure that once the MongoDB server reappears, requests complete (without it, requests made during downtime seem to run forever...) - and I don't have access to the client code so I can't fix it there...
I'd assumed a combination of 'connectTimeoutMS' or 'socketTimeoutMS' would allow me to terminate requests when MongoDB is unavailable for longer periods, but I just can't get those to work (I've tried them as connect options, passing them in the URI etc. etc.)
Any attempt to open a Collection and Find/Insert/Update just 'hangs' until the MongoDB reappears - I've left it over 30 mins and everything was just sitting these (and completed AOK when the network was restored!)
What's the best way around this? Should I open a connection specifically for each request (not really a performance issue - it's not a high volume app) or is there something else I'm missing?
Updated to add the connect code
var myDB
var mongodb = require('mongodb')
var uri = // some env vars and stuff
mongodb.MongoClient.connect(uri, {server: {auto_reconnect: true}}, function (err, db) {
myDB = db
})
myDB is then used elsewhere to open collections - and the handle from that is used to find/insert etc.
If the connection to the DB is interrupted, myDB.collection() calls (or calls to find/insert on their handles) will simply hang until the connection is restored - nothing I've tried will cause them to 'time out' sooner!?
I assume that you are using mongoose as a driver.
You'd catch the error by this.
var db = require('domain').create();
db.on('error', function(err) {
console.log('DB got a problem');
});
db.run(function() {
mongoose.connect(config, options);
});
or you can directly access
mongoose.connection.readyState
to check the statement of your DB.
Connection ready state
0 = disconnected
1 = connected
2 = connecting
3 = disconnecting
Each state change emits its associated event name.
http://mongoosejs.com/docs/api.html

Node/Sails/Node-Postgres, best practice for storing connection string

I'm using the Node-Postgres package for querying a postgresql/postgis database for an app I'm building within the Sails.js framework.
I don't know where the best place to store my connection string for the node-postgres package would be to make it accessible in models and controllers but still secure.
For example, if I want to execute a query against the postgres database from within a model, what I currently do:
var conString = "postgres://postgres:mypass#localhost:5432/myapp_dev";
var client = new pg.Client(conString);
client.connect();
var junk = [];
client.query('SELECT * FROM junk', function (err, result) {
// Stuff I do with the query result
});
Obviously it's bad practice/inconvenient to declare this connectionstring and new client every time I need to execute a query. So, what I would like to be able to do is:
client.connect();
var junk = [];
client.query('SELECT * FROM junk', function (err, result) {
// Stuff I do with the query result
});
So I just removed the conString and new client declarations. But I don't know where in my app to store those to make them accessible yet secure.
My directory structure follows the standard Sails.js application structure, similar to this: http://runnable.com/UlbJJhdpQyoWAAAK/sails-js-example-project-for-node-js-and-webserver
Any help would be appreciated
In sails.js, you can set environment-specific configs in config/env/development.js, or config/env/production.js.
Always store all sensitive info in environment variables, and never in config files. So your config file would read a env variable called POSTGRES_CONNECTION like so:
process.env.POSTGRES_CONNECTION
For anyone struggling with this same question, I would recommend storing your Sails database adapter definitions in the local.js file.
See the solution here for an example: Using local.js to store sails-mysql password

Should I keep database connection open?

When I connect to Rexster graph server with Grex should I keep the database connection open?
var grex = require('grex');
var client = grex.createClient();
client.connect({ graph: 'graph'}, function(err, client) {
if (err) { console.error(err); }
...
});
I think I should because nodejs is single threaded so there's no chance of different requests trying to use the one connection at the same time.
Yes, you should. There 's no reason to have the overhead of connecting on every request. There will not be any issue of "mangling", as your code will be run in a single thread anyway.
Furthermore, you could even have a pool of connections waiting to serve your requests in case you have a heavy usage application. Some adapters do it for you automatically, for example, MongoClient has a default pool of 5 connections.

Connection to Mongodb-Native-Driver in express.js

I am using mongodb-native-driver in express.js app. I have around 6 collections in the database, so I have created 6 js files with each having a collection as a javascript object (e.g function collection(){}) and the prototypes functions handling all the manipulation on those collections. I thought this would be a good architecture.
But the problem I am having is how to connect to the database? Should I create a connection in each of this files and use them? I think that would be an overkill as the connect in mongodb-native-driver creates a pool of connections and having several of them would not be justified.
So how do I create a single connection pool and use it in all the collections.js files? I want to have the connection like its implemented in mongoose. Let me know if any of my thought process in architecture of the app is wrong.
Using Mongoose would solve these problems, but I have read in several places thats it slower than native-driver and also I would prefer a schema-less models.
Edit: I created a module out of models. Each collection was in a file and it took the database as an argument. Now in the index.js file I called the database connection and kept a variable db after I got the database from the connection. (I used the auto-reconnect feature to make sure that the connection wasn't lost). In the same index.js file I exported each of the collections like this
exports.model1 = require('./model1').(db)
exprorts.model2 = require('./model2').(db)
This ensured that the database part was handled in just one module and the app would just call function that each model.js file exported like save(), fincdbyid() etc (whatever you do in the function is upto you to implement).
how to connect to the database?
In order to connect using the MongoDB native driver you need to do something like the following:
var util = require('util');
var mongodb = require('mongodb');
var client = mongodb.MongoClient;
var auth = {
user: 'username',
pass: 'password',
host: 'hostname',
port: 1337,
name: 'databaseName'
};
var uri = util.format('mongodb://%s:%s#%s:%d/%s',
auth.user, auth.pass, auth.host, auth.port, auth.name);
/** Connect to the Mongo database at the URI using the client */
client.connect(uri, { auto_reconnect: true }, function (err, database) {
if (err) throw err;
else if (!database) console.log('Unknown error connecting to database');
else {
console.log('Connected to MongoDB database server at:');
console.log('\n\t%s\n', uri);
// Create or access collections, etc here using the database object
}
});
A basic connection is setup like this. This is all I can give you going on just the basic description of what you want. Post up some code you've got so far to get more specific help.
Should I create a connection in each of this files and use them?
No.
So how do I create a single connection pool and use it in all the collections.js files?
You can create a single file with code like the above, lets call it dbmanager.js connecting to the database. Export functions like createUser, deleteUser, etc. which operate on your database, then export functionality like so:
module.exports = {
createUser: function () { ; },
deleteUser: function () { ; }
};
which you could then require from another file like so:
var dbman = require('./dbmanager');
dbman.createUser(userData); // using connection established in `dbmanager.js`
EDIT: Because we're dealing with JavaScript and a single thread, the native driver indeed automatically handles connection pooling for you. You can look for this in the StackOverflow links below for more confirmation of this. The OP does state this in the question as well. This means that client.connect should be called only once by an instance of your server. After the database object is successfully retrieved from a call to client.connect, that database object should be reused throughout the entire instance of your app. This is easily accomplished by using the module pattern that Node.JS provides.
My suggestion is to create a module or set of modules which serves as a single point of contact for interacting with the database. In my apps I usually have a single module which depends on the native driver, calling require('mongodb'). All other modules in my app will not directly access the database, but instead all manipulations must be coordinated by this database module.
This encapsulates all of the code dealing with the native driver into a single module or set of modules. The OP seems to think there is a problem with the simple code example I've posted, describing a problem with a "single large closure" in my example. This is all pretty basic stuff, so I'm adding clarification as to the basic architecture at work here, but I still do not feel the need to change any code.
The OP also seems to think that multiple connections could possibly be made here. This is not possible with this setup. If you created a module like I suggest above then the first time require('./dbmanager') is called it will execute the code in the file dbmanager.js and return the module.exports object. The exports object is cached and is also returned on each subsequent call to require('./dbmanager'), however, the code in dbmanager.js will only be executed the first require.
If you don't want to create a module like this then the other option would be to export only the database passed to the callback for client.connect and use it directly in different places throughout your app. I recommend against this however, regardless of the OPs concerns.
Similar, possibly duplicate Stackoverflow questions, among others:
How to manage mongodb connections in nodejs webapp
Node.JS and MongoDB, reusing the DB object
Node.JS - What is the right way to deal with MongoDB connections
As accepted answer says - you should create only one connection for all incoming requests and reuse it, but answer is missing solution, that will create and cache connection. I wrote express middleware to achieve this - express-mongo-db. At first sight this task is trivial, and most people use this kind of code:
var db;
function createConnection(req, res, next) {
if (db) { req.db = db; next(); }
client.connect(uri, { auto_reconnect: true }, function (err, database) {
req.db = db = databse;
next();
});
}
app.use(createConnection);
But this code lead you to connection-leak, when multiple request arrives at the same time, and db is undefined. express-mongo-db solving this by holding incoming clients and calling connect only once, when module is required (not when first request arrives).
Hope you find it useful.
I just thought I would add in my own method of MongoDB connection for others interested or having problems with different methods
This method assumes you don't need authentication(I use this on localhost)
Authentication is still easy to implement
var MongoClient = require('mongodb').MongoClient;
var Server = require('mongodb').Server;
var client = new MongoClient(new Server('localhost',27017,{
socketOptions: {connectTimeoutMS: 500},
poolSize:5,
auto_reconnect:true
}, {
numberOfRetries:3,
retryMilliseconds: 500
}));
client.open(function(err, client) {
if(err) {
console.log("Connection Failed Via Client Object.");
} else {
var db = client.db("theDbName");
if(db) {
console.log("Connected Via Client Object . . .");
db.logout(function(err,result) {
if(!err) {
console.log("Logged out successfully");
}
client.close();
console.log("Connection closed");
});
}
}
});
Credit goes to Brad Davley which goes over this method in his book (page 231-232)

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