Question

Job on App Platform does not have managed database connection string

Posted on December 3, 2022
DigitalOcean App Platform DigitalOcean Managed PostgreSQL Database Django
Asked by Alexandru Mihai

Details:

I have the following App Platform structure:

api - component running Django
static - handles assets
migration job - defined that runs python manage.py migrate triggered before every deploy

I’ve configured a Managed Database and I was expecting everything to work properly, however, the deployment fails because the DATABASE_URL environment variable is not exposed to both API & Migrate components of the app.

Solution:

I’ve fixed this by manually taking the DB connection string and adding the missing environment variable, but is this how it should work?

Expected behaviour:

Managed database exposes DATABASE_URL environment variable to all components of App Platform that it has as trusted sources.

Submit an answer

This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.

You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.

Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• December 4, 2022

Hey @alexmscubadiver,

I believe that the database environment variables are not available during BUILD_TIME scope, if you define your migration job as PRE_DEPLOY the DATABASE_URL should be available as normal.

Here is a quick example of that:

https://github.com/digitalocean/sample-django/blob/main/.do/app.yaml

Let me know how it goes.

Hope that helps!

- Bobby.