#Pick your elephant poison

There are a myriad of ways to install PostgreSQL on a Mac. I will be going over brew{:sh} and Postgres.app. I like to go with the app as it eases into my workflow but does require it’s path to be set in your profile (e.g .zshrc{:sh}, .bashrc{:sh}, or fish.config{:sh})

#Homebrew Installation

The homebrew installation is straightforward and can be done by following the guide below.

  • Run a brew command to install PG and take note of the documentation that follows it.
brew install postgresql
  • If this is your first install run the following command to create your first database
initdb /usr/local/var/postgres -E utf8
  • Create aliases to simplify the start and stop of the Postgres service
alias pg-start='pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres -l /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log start'
alias pg-stop='pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres stop -s -m fast'

#Postgres.app Installation

  1. Visit https://postgresapp.com

  2. Download the latest version which as of this writing is 9.2.4.1{:sh}

  3. Drag, drop, and open the elephant icon into the Application folder.

  4. Set the following in your .bashrc{:sh} or.zshrc{:sh}

     PATH="/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/MacOS/bin:$PATH"
 # If you are using Fish, use the following:
 set PATH /Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/MacOS/bin $PATH

  5. Open the elephant and verify it is referencing the app using which psql{:sh}

The path should look like what was entered above but if all else fails restart your terminal session.

#Use Postgres in Rails

Now that you’ve successfully installed PG, you can utilize it in rails by including it in your gemfile.

#New Rails App

If you have yet to generate your rails app, you can set Postgresql as your database by running rails new blog -d postgresql{:sh} You will then have to run rake db:create:all{:sh} to create the databases in the database.yml{:sh} file.

#Existing Rails App

For an existing rails app you will need to add the pg{:ruby} gem to your gemfile like so.

source 'https://rubygems.org'

gem 'rails', '4.0.0.rc1'
gem "pg", "~> 0.15.1"

gem 'sass-rails', '~> 4.0.0.rc1'
gem 'uglifier', '>= 1.3.0'
gem 'coffee-rails', '~> 4.0.0'
gem 'jquery-rails'
gem 'turbolinks'

You will also need to change your database.yml file to look something like this:

development:
  adapter: postgresql
  encoding: utf8
  database: blog_dev
  host: localhost
test:
  adapter: postgresql
  encoding: utf8
  database: blog_test
  host: localhost

production:
  adapter: postgresql
  encoding: utf8
  database: blog_production
  host: supersecretserver

Finally, you can run rake db:create:all{:sh} followed by rake db:migrat{:sh} and continue editing your amazing rails app!

#Resources