Using Hasura Cloud with a GCP Postgres database

Introduction

This guide explains how to connect a new or existing GCP Postgres database to a Hasura Cloud project.

Step 0: Sign up or log in to Hasura Cloud

Navigate to Hasura Cloud and sign up or log in.

Step 1: Create a Hasura Cloud project

On the Hasura Cloud dashboard, create a new project:

Create Hasura Cloud project

After the project is initialized successfully, click on Launch console to open the Hasura console in your browser.

On the Hasura console, navigate to Data -> Manage -> Connect Database -> Connect existing database:

You will get prompted for a Postgres Database URL. We will create this in the next step and then come back here.

Hasura Cloud database setup

Step 2: Create a Postgres DB on GCP (skip if you have an existing DB)

Log into the GCP console.

On the left-side navigation, scroll down to Storage and click on SQL:

Navigate to SQL in GCP

On the top, click on Create instance:

Create database instance in GCP

Select Postgres:

Select Postgres database instance in GCP

Select an instance ID, as well as a default user password. If required, choose a specific region and zone.

Configure database instance in GCP

Then click Create.

Step 3: Allow connections to your DB from Hasura Cloud

On the dashboard of your GCP database instance, on the left sidebar, click on Connections. Then scroll down to the checkbox Public IP, and click + Add network:

Navigate to connections in GCP

You can choose an optional name (e.g. “Hasura”).

Copy the IP address from the copy icon in the Hasura Cloud IP field on the project’s details view on Hasura Cloud.

Hasura Cloud IP field

Enter the Hasura IP address that you copied:

Add a new network in GCP

Then click Save.

Note

If you’re using a database user other than the default one, make sure to give it the right Postgres permissions.

Step 4: Construct the database connection URL

The structure of the database connection URL looks as follows:

postgresql://<user-name>:<password>@<public-ip>:<postgres-port>/<db>
  • user-name: If you have a separate database user, the user name will be their name. If you didn’t specify a user, the default user name is postgres.
  • password: If you have a separate database user, use their password. Otherwise, use the password that you chose when creating the database.
  • public-ip: The public IP can be optained by clicking on Overview on the left-side navigation and then scrolling down to Connect to this instance:
Find the public IP for a GCP Postgres database
  • postgres-port: The default port for Postgres is 5432 if not specified otherwise.
  • db: The DB is postgres by default unless otherwise specified.

Step 5: Finish connecting the database

Back on Hasura Console, enter the database URL that we retrieved in step 4:

Database setup

Then click Connect Database.

Note

For security reasons, it is recommended to set database URLs as env vars and using the env vars to connect to the databases in place of the raw database URLs.

Voilà. You are ready to start developing.

Hasura console

Next steps

You can check out our 30-Minute Hasura Basics Course and other GraphQL & Hasura Courses for a more detailed introduction to Hasura.

You can also click the gear icon to manage your Hasura Cloud project. (e.g. add collaborators, env vars or custom domains) and add an admin secret to make sure that your GraphQL endpoint and the Hasura console are not publicly accessible.

Project actions