The following functions deal with making a connection to a
PostgreSQL backend server. An
application program can have several backend connections open at
one time. (One reason to do that is to access more than one
database.) Each connection is represented by a
PGconn
object, which
is obtained from the function PQconnectdb
,
PQconnectdbParams
, or
PQsetdbLogin
. Note that these functions will always
return a non-null object pointer, unless perhaps there is too
little memory even to allocate the PGconn
object.
The PQstatus
function should be called to check
the return value for a successful connection before queries are sent
via the connection object.
If untrusted users have access to a database that has not adopted a
secure schema usage pattern,
begin each session by removing publicly-writable schemas from
search_path
. One can set parameter key
word options
to
value -csearch_path=
. Alternately, one can
issue PQexec(
after
connecting. This consideration is not specific
to libpq; it applies to every interface for
executing arbitrary SQL commands.
conn
, "SELECT
pg_catalog.set_config('search_path', '', false)")
On Unix, forking a process with open libpq connections can lead to
unpredictable results because the parent and child processes share
the same sockets and operating system resources. For this reason,
such usage is not recommended, though doing an exec
from
the child process to load a new executable is safe.
PQconnectdbParams
Makes a new connection to the database server.
PGconn *PQconnectdbParams(const char * const *keywords, const char * const *values, int expand_dbname);
This function opens a new database connection using the parameters taken
from two NULL
-terminated arrays. The first,
keywords
, is defined as an array of strings, each one
being a key word. The second, values
, gives the value
for each key word. Unlike PQsetdbLogin
below, the parameter
set can be extended without changing the function signature, so use of
this function (or its nonblocking analogs PQconnectStartParams
and PQconnectPoll
) is preferred for new application
programming.
The currently recognized parameter key words are listed in Section 34.1.2.
The passed arrays can be empty to use all default parameters, or can
contain one or more parameter settings. They must be matched in length.
Processing will stop at the first NULL
entry
in the keywords
array.
Also, if the values
entry associated with a
non-NULL
keywords
entry is
NULL
or an empty string, that entry is ignored and
processing continues with the next pair of array entries.
When expand_dbname
is non-zero, the value for
the first dbname
key word is checked to see
if it is a connection string. If so, it
is “expanded” into the individual connection
parameters extracted from the string. The value is considered to
be a connection string, rather than just a database name, if it
contains an equal sign (=
) or it begins with a
URI scheme designator. (More details on connection string formats
appear in Section 34.1.1.) Only the first
occurrence of dbname
is treated in this way;
any subsequent dbname
parameter is processed
as a plain database name.
In general the parameter arrays are processed from start to end.
If any key word is repeated, the last value (that is
not NULL
or empty) is used. This rule applies in
particular when a key word found in a connection string conflicts
with one appearing in the keywords
array. Thus,
the programmer may determine whether array entries can override or
be overridden by values taken from a connection string. Array
entries appearing before an expanded dbname
entry can be overridden by fields of the connection string, and in
turn those fields are overridden by array entries appearing
after dbname
(but, again, only if those
entries supply non-empty values).
After processing all the array entries and any expanded connection string, any connection parameters that remain unset are filled with default values. If an unset parameter's corresponding environment variable (see Section 34.15) is set, its value is used. If the environment variable is not set either, then the parameter's built-in default value is used.
PQconnectdb
Makes a new connection to the database server.
PGconn *PQconnectdb(const char *conninfo);
This function opens a new database connection using the parameters taken
from the string conninfo
.
The passed string can be empty to use all default parameters, or it can contain one or more parameter settings separated by whitespace, or it can contain a URI. See Section 34.1.1 for details.
PQsetdbLogin
Makes a new connection to the database server.
PGconn *PQsetdbLogin(const char *pghost, const char *pgport, const char *pgoptions, const char *pgtty, const char *dbName, const char *login, const char *pwd);
This is the predecessor of PQconnectdb
with a fixed
set of parameters. It has the same functionality except that the
missing parameters will always take on default values. Write NULL
or an
empty string for any one of the fixed parameters that is to be defaulted.
If the dbName
contains
an =
sign or has a valid connection URI prefix, it
is taken as a conninfo
string in exactly the same way as
if it had been passed to PQconnectdb
, and the remaining
parameters are then applied as specified for PQconnectdbParams
.
pgtty
is no longer used and any value passed will
be ignored.
PQsetdb
Makes a new connection to the database server.
PGconn *PQsetdb(char *pghost, char *pgport, char *pgoptions, char *pgtty, char *dbName);
This is a macro that calls PQsetdbLogin
with null pointers
for the login
and pwd
parameters. It is provided
for backward compatibility with very old programs.
PQconnectStartParams
PQconnectStart
PQconnectPoll
Make a connection to the database server in a nonblocking manner.
PGconn *PQconnectStartParams(const char * const *keywords, const char * const *values, int expand_dbname); PGconn *PQconnectStart(const char *conninfo); PostgresPollingStatusType PQconnectPoll(PGconn *conn);
These three functions are used to open a connection to a database server such
that your application's thread of execution is not blocked on remote I/O
whilst doing so. The point of this approach is that the waits for I/O to
complete can occur in the application's main loop, rather than down inside
PQconnectdbParams
or PQconnectdb
, and so the
application can manage this operation in parallel with other activities.
With PQconnectStartParams
, the database connection is made
using the parameters taken from the keywords
and
values
arrays, and controlled by expand_dbname
,
as described above for PQconnectdbParams
.
With PQconnectStart
, the database connection is made
using the parameters taken from the string conninfo
as
described above for PQconnectdb
.
Neither PQconnectStartParams
nor PQconnectStart
nor PQconnectPoll
will block, so long as a number of
restrictions are met:
The hostaddr
parameter must be used appropriately
to prevent DNS queries from being made. See the documentation of
this parameter in Section 34.1.2 for details.
If you call PQtrace
, ensure that the stream object
into which you trace will not block.
You must ensure that the socket is in the appropriate state
before calling PQconnectPoll
, as described below.
To begin a nonblocking connection request,
call PQconnectStart
or PQconnectStartParams
. If the result is null,
then libpq has been unable to allocate a
new PGconn
structure. Otherwise, a
valid PGconn
pointer is returned (though not
yet representing a valid connection to the database). Next
call PQstatus(conn)
. If the result
is CONNECTION_BAD
, the connection attempt has already
failed, typically because of invalid connection parameters.
If PQconnectStart
or PQconnectStartParams
succeeds, the next stage
is to poll libpq so that it can proceed with
the connection sequence.
Use PQsocket(conn)
to obtain the descriptor of the
socket underlying the database connection.
(Caution: do not assume that the socket remains the same
across PQconnectPoll
calls.)
Loop thus: If PQconnectPoll(conn)
last returned
PGRES_POLLING_READING
, wait until the socket is ready to
read (as indicated by select()
, poll()
, or
similar system function).
Then call PQconnectPoll(conn)
again.
Conversely, if PQconnectPoll(conn)
last returned
PGRES_POLLING_WRITING
, wait until the socket is ready
to write, then call PQconnectPoll(conn)
again.
On the first iteration, i.e., if you have yet to call
PQconnectPoll
, behave as if it last returned
PGRES_POLLING_WRITING
. Continue this loop until
PQconnectPoll(conn)
returns
PGRES_POLLING_FAILED
, indicating the connection procedure
has failed, or PGRES_POLLING_OK
, indicating the connection
has been successfully made.
At any time during connection, the status of the connection can be
checked by calling PQstatus
. If this call returns CONNECTION_BAD
, then the
connection procedure has failed; if the call returns CONNECTION_OK
, then the
connection is ready. Both of these states are equally detectable
from the return value of PQconnectPoll
, described above. Other states might also occur
during (and only during) an asynchronous connection procedure. These
indicate the current stage of the connection procedure and might be useful
to provide feedback to the user for example. These statuses are:
CONNECTION_STARTED
Waiting for connection to be made.
CONNECTION_MADE
Connection OK; waiting to send.
CONNECTION_AWAITING_RESPONSE
Waiting for a response from the server.
CONNECTION_AUTH_OK
Received authentication; waiting for backend start-up to finish.
CONNECTION_SSL_STARTUP
Negotiating SSL encryption.
CONNECTION_SETENV
Negotiating environment-driven parameter settings.
CONNECTION_CHECK_WRITABLE
Checking if connection is able to handle write transactions.
CONNECTION_CONSUME
Consuming any remaining response messages on connection.
Note that, although these constants will remain (in order to maintain compatibility), an application should never rely upon these occurring in a particular order, or at all, or on the status always being one of these documented values. An application might do something like this:
switch(PQstatus(conn)) { case CONNECTION_STARTED: feedback = "Connecting..."; break; case CONNECTION_MADE: feedback = "Connected to server..."; break; . . . default: feedback = "Connecting..."; }
The connect_timeout
connection parameter is ignored
when using PQconnectPoll
; it is the application's
responsibility to decide whether an excessive amount of time has elapsed.
Otherwise, PQconnectStart
followed by a
PQconnectPoll
loop is equivalent to
PQconnectdb
.
Note that when PQconnectStart
or PQconnectStartParams
returns a non-null
pointer, you must call PQfinish
when you are
finished with it, in order to dispose of the structure and any
associated memory blocks. This must be done even if the connection
attempt fails or is abandoned.
PQconndefaults
Returns the default connection options.
PQconninfoOption *PQconndefaults(void); typedef struct { char *keyword; /* The keyword of the option */ char *envvar; /* Fallback environment variable name */ char *compiled; /* Fallback compiled in default value */ char *val; /* Option's current value, or NULL */ char *label; /* Label for field in connect dialog */ char *dispchar; /* Indicates how to display this field in a connect dialog. Values are: "" Display entered value as is "*" Password field - hide value "D" Debug option - don't show by default */ int dispsize; /* Field size in characters for dialog */ } PQconninfoOption;
Returns a connection options array. This can be used to determine
all possible PQconnectdb
options and their
current default values. The return value points to an array of
PQconninfoOption
structures, which ends
with an entry having a null keyword
pointer. The
null pointer is returned if memory could not be allocated. Note that
the current default values (val
fields)
will depend on environment variables and other context. A
missing or invalid service file will be silently ignored. Callers
must treat the connection options data as read-only.
After processing the options array, free it by passing it to
PQconninfoFree
. If this is not done, a small amount of memory
is leaked for each call to PQconndefaults
.
PQconninfo
Returns the connection options used by a live connection.
PQconninfoOption *PQconninfo(PGconn *conn);
Returns a connection options array. This can be used to determine
all possible PQconnectdb
options and the
values that were used to connect to the server. The return
value points to an array of PQconninfoOption
structures, which ends with an entry having a null keyword
pointer. All notes above for PQconndefaults
also
apply to the result of PQconninfo
.
PQconninfoParse
Returns parsed connection options from the provided connection string.
PQconninfoOption *PQconninfoParse(const char *conninfo, char **errmsg);
Parses a connection string and returns the resulting options as an
array; or returns NULL
if there is a problem with the connection
string. This function can be used to extract
the PQconnectdb
options in the provided
connection string. The return value points to an array of
PQconninfoOption
structures, which ends
with an entry having a null keyword
pointer.
All legal options will be present in the result array, but the
PQconninfoOption
for any option not present
in the connection string will have val
set to
NULL
; default values are not inserted.
If errmsg
is not NULL
, then *errmsg
is set
to NULL
on success, else to a malloc
'd error string explaining
the problem. (It is also possible for *errmsg
to be
set to NULL
and the function to return NULL
;
this indicates an out-of-memory condition.)
After processing the options array, free it by passing it to
PQconninfoFree
. If this is not done, some memory
is leaked for each call to PQconninfoParse
.
Conversely, if an error occurs and errmsg
is not NULL
,
be sure to free the error string using PQfreemem
.
PQfinish
Closes the connection to the server. Also frees
memory used by the PGconn
object.
void PQfinish(PGconn *conn);
Note that even if the server connection attempt fails (as
indicated by PQstatus
), the application should call PQfinish
to free the memory used by the PGconn
object.
The PGconn
pointer must not be used again after
PQfinish
has been called.
PQreset
Resets the communication channel to the server.
void PQreset(PGconn *conn);
This function will close the connection to the server and attempt to establish a new connection, using all the same parameters previously used. This might be useful for error recovery if a working connection is lost.
PQresetStart
PQresetPoll
Reset the communication channel to the server, in a nonblocking manner.
int PQresetStart(PGconn *conn); PostgresPollingStatusType PQresetPoll(PGconn *conn);
These functions will close the connection to the server and attempt to
establish a new connection, using all the same
parameters previously used. This can be useful for error recovery if a
working connection is lost. They differ from PQreset
(above) in that they
act in a nonblocking manner. These functions suffer from the same
restrictions as PQconnectStartParams
, PQconnectStart
and PQconnectPoll
.
To initiate a connection reset, call
PQresetStart
. If it returns 0, the reset has
failed. If it returns 1, poll the reset using
PQresetPoll
in exactly the same way as you
would create the connection using PQconnectPoll
.
PQpingParams
PQpingParams
reports the status of the
server. It accepts connection parameters identical to those of
PQconnectdbParams
, described above. It is not
necessary to supply correct user name, password, or database name
values to obtain the server status; however, if incorrect values
are provided, the server will log a failed connection attempt.
PGPing PQpingParams(const char * const *keywords, const char * const *values, int expand_dbname);
The function returns one of the following values:
PQPING_OK
The server is running and appears to be accepting connections.
PQPING_REJECT
The server is running but is in a state that disallows connections (startup, shutdown, or crash recovery).
PQPING_NO_RESPONSE
The server could not be contacted. This might indicate that the server is not running, or that there is something wrong with the given connection parameters (for example, wrong port number), or that there is a network connectivity problem (for example, a firewall blocking the connection request).
PQPING_NO_ATTEMPT
No attempt was made to contact the server, because the supplied parameters were obviously incorrect or there was some client-side problem (for example, out of memory).
PQping
PQping
reports the status of the
server. It accepts connection parameters identical to those of
PQconnectdb
, described above. It is not
necessary to supply correct user name, password, or database name
values to obtain the server status; however, if incorrect values
are provided, the server will log a failed connection attempt.
PGPing PQping(const char *conninfo);
The return values are the same as for PQpingParams
.
PQsetSSLKeyPassHook_OpenSSL
PQsetSSLKeyPassHook_OpenSSL
lets an application override
libpq's default
handling of encrypted client certificate key files using
sslpassword or interactive prompting.
void PQsetSSLKeyPassHook_OpenSSL(PQsslKeyPassHook_OpenSSL_type hook);
The application passes a pointer to a callback function with signature:
int callback_fn(char *buf, int size, PGconn *conn);
which libpq will then call
instead of its default
PQdefaultSSLKeyPassHook_OpenSSL
handler. The
callback should determine the password for the key and copy it to
result-buffer buf
of size
size
. The string in buf
must be null-terminated. The callback must return the length of the
password stored in buf
excluding the null
terminator. On failure, the callback should set
buf[0] = '\0'
and return 0. See
PQdefaultSSLKeyPassHook_OpenSSL
in
libpq's source code for an example.
If the user specified an explicit key location,
its path will be in conn->sslkey
when the callback
is invoked. This will be empty if the default key path is being used.
For keys that are engine specifiers, it is up to engine implementations
whether they use the OpenSSL password
callback or define their own handling.
The app callback may choose to delegate unhandled cases to
PQdefaultSSLKeyPassHook_OpenSSL
,
or call it first and try something else if it returns 0, or completely override it.
The callback must not escape normal flow control with exceptions,
longjmp(...)
, etc. It must return normally.
PQgetSSLKeyPassHook_OpenSSL
PQgetSSLKeyPassHook_OpenSSL
returns the current
client certificate key password hook, or NULL
if none has been set.
PQsslKeyPassHook_OpenSSL_type PQgetSSLKeyPassHook_OpenSSL(void);
Several libpq functions parse a user-specified string to obtain connection parameters. There are two accepted formats for these strings: plain keyword/value strings and URIs. URIs generally follow RFC 3986, except that multi-host connection strings are allowed as further described below.
In the keyword/value format, each parameter setting is in the form
keyword
=
value
, with space(s) between settings.
Spaces around a setting's equal sign are
optional. To write an empty value, or a value containing spaces, surround it
with single quotes, for example keyword = 'a value'
.
Single quotes and backslashes within
a value must be escaped with a backslash, i.e., \'
and
\\
.
Example:
host=localhost port=5432 dbname=mydb connect_timeout=10
The recognized parameter key words are listed in Section 34.1.2.
The general form for a connection URI is:
postgresql://[userspec
@][hostspec
][/dbname
][?paramspec
] whereuserspec
is:user
[:password
] andhostspec
is: [host
][:port
][,...] andparamspec
is:name
=value
[&...]
The URI scheme designator can be either
postgresql://
or postgres://
. Each
of the remaining URI parts is optional. The
following examples illustrate valid URI syntax:
postgresql:// postgresql://localhost postgresql://localhost:5433 postgresql://localhost/mydb postgresql://user@localhost postgresql://user:secret@localhost postgresql://other@localhost/otherdb?connect_timeout=10&application_name=myapp postgresql://host1:123,host2:456/somedb?target_session_attrs=any&application_name=myapp
Values that would normally appear in the hierarchical part of the URI can alternatively be given as named parameters. For example:
postgresql:///mydb?host=localhost&port=5433
All named parameters must match key words listed in
Section 34.1.2, except that for compatibility
with JDBC connection URIs, instances
of ssl=true
are translated into
sslmode=require
.
The connection URI needs to be encoded with percent-encoding
if it includes symbols with special meaning in any of its parts. Here is
an example where the equal sign (=
) is replaced with
%3D
and the space character with
%20
:
postgresql://user@localhost:5433/mydb?options=-c%20synchronous_commit%3Doff
The host part may be either a host name or an IP address. To specify an IPv6 address, enclose it in square brackets:
postgresql://[2001:db8::1234]/database
The host part is interpreted as described for the parameter host. In particular, a Unix-domain socket connection is chosen if the host part is either empty or looks like an absolute path name, otherwise a TCP/IP connection is initiated. Note, however, that the slash is a reserved character in the hierarchical part of the URI. So, to specify a non-standard Unix-domain socket directory, either omit the host part of the URI and specify the host as a named parameter, or percent-encode the path in the host part of the URI:
postgresql:///dbname?host=/var/lib/postgresql postgresql://%2Fvar%2Flib%2Fpostgresql/dbname
It is possible to specify multiple host components, each with an optional
port component, in a single URI. A URI of the form
postgresql://host1:port1,host2:port2,host3:port3/
is equivalent to a connection string of the form
host=host1,host2,host3 port=port1,port2,port3
.
As further described below, each
host will be tried in turn until a connection is successfully established.
It is possible to specify multiple hosts to connect to, so that they are
tried in the given order. In the Keyword/Value format, the host
,
hostaddr
, and port
options accept comma-separated
lists of values. The same number of elements must be given in each
option that is specified, such
that e.g., the first hostaddr
corresponds to the first host name,
the second hostaddr
corresponds to the second host name, and so
forth. As an exception, if only one port
is specified, it
applies to all the hosts.
In the connection URI format, you can list multiple host:port
pairs
separated by commas in the host
component of the URI.
In either format, a single host name can translate to multiple network addresses. A common example of this is a host that has both an IPv4 and an IPv6 address.
When multiple hosts are specified, or when a single host name is translated to multiple addresses, all the hosts and addresses will be tried in order, until one succeeds. If none of the hosts can be reached, the connection fails. If a connection is established successfully, but authentication fails, the remaining hosts in the list are not tried.
If a password file is used, you can have different passwords for different hosts. All the other connection options are the same for every host in the list; it is not possible to e.g., specify different usernames for different hosts.
The currently recognized parameter key words are:
host
Name of host to connect to. If a host name looks like an absolute path
name, it specifies Unix-domain communication rather than TCP/IP
communication; the value is the name of the directory in which the
socket file is stored. (On Unix, an absolute path name begins with a
slash. On Windows, paths starting with drive letters are also
recognized.) If the host name starts with @
, it is
taken as a Unix-domain socket in the abstract namespace (currently
supported on Linux and Windows).
The default behavior when host
is not
specified, or is empty, is to connect to a Unix-domain
socket in
/tmp
(or whatever socket directory was specified
when PostgreSQL was built). On Windows and
on machines without Unix-domain sockets, the default is to connect to
localhost
.
A comma-separated list of host names is also accepted, in which case each host name in the list is tried in order; an empty item in the list selects the default behavior as explained above. See Section 34.1.1.3 for details.
hostaddr
Numeric IP address of host to connect to. This should be in the
standard IPv4 address format, e.g., 172.28.40.9
. If
your machine supports IPv6, you can also use those addresses.
TCP/IP communication is
always used when a nonempty string is specified for this parameter.
If this parameter is not specified, the value of host
will be looked up to find the corresponding IP address — or, if
host
specifies an IP address, that value will be
used directly.
Using hostaddr
allows the
application to avoid a host name look-up, which might be important
in applications with time constraints. However, a host name is
required for GSSAPI or SSPI authentication
methods, as well as for verify-full
SSL
certificate verification. The following rules are used:
If host
is specified
without hostaddr
, a host name lookup occurs.
(When using PQconnectPoll
, the lookup occurs
when PQconnectPoll
first considers this host
name, and it may cause PQconnectPoll
to block
for a significant amount of time.)
If hostaddr
is specified without host
,
the value for hostaddr
gives the server network address.
The connection attempt will fail if the authentication
method requires a host name.
If both host
and hostaddr
are specified,
the value for hostaddr
gives the server network address.
The value for host
is ignored unless the
authentication method requires it, in which case it will be
used as the host name.
Note that authentication is likely to fail if host
is not the name of the server at network address hostaddr
.
Also, when both host
and hostaddr
are specified, host
is used to identify the connection in a password file (see
Section 34.16).
A comma-separated list of hostaddr
values is also
accepted, in which case each host in the list is tried in order.
An empty item in the list causes the corresponding host name to be
used, or the default host name if that is empty as well. See
Section 34.1.1.3 for details.
Without either a host name or host address,
libpq will connect using a local
Unix-domain socket; or on Windows and on machines without Unix-domain
sockets, it will attempt to connect to localhost
.
port
Port number to connect to at the server host, or socket file
name extension for Unix-domain
connections.
If multiple hosts were given in the host
or
hostaddr
parameters, this parameter may specify a
comma-separated list of ports of the same length as the host list, or
it may specify a single port number to be used for all hosts.
An empty string, or an empty item in a comma-separated list,
specifies the default port number established
when PostgreSQL was built.
dbname
The database name. Defaults to be the same as the user name. In certain contexts, the value is checked for extended formats; see Section 34.1.1 for more details on those.
user
PostgreSQL user name to connect as. Defaults to be the same as the operating system name of the user running the application.
password
Password to be used if the server demands password authentication.
passfile
Specifies the name of the file used to store passwords
(see Section 34.16).
Defaults to ~/.pgpass
, or
%APPDATA%\postgresql\pgpass.conf
on Microsoft Windows.
(No error is reported if this file does not exist.)
channel_binding
This option controls the client's use of channel binding. A setting
of require
means that the connection must employ
channel binding, prefer
means that the client will
choose channel binding if available, and disable
prevents the use of channel binding. The default
is prefer
if
PostgreSQL is compiled with SSL support;
otherwise the default is disable
.
Channel binding is a method for the server to authenticate itself to
the client. It is only supported over SSL connections
with PostgreSQL 11 or later servers using
the SCRAM
authentication method.
connect_timeout
Maximum time to wait while connecting, in seconds (write as a decimal integer,
e.g., 10
). Zero, negative, or not specified means
wait indefinitely. The minimum allowed timeout is 2 seconds, therefore
a value of 1
is interpreted as 2
.
This timeout applies separately to each host name or IP address.
For example, if you specify two hosts and connect_timeout
is 5, each host will time out if no connection is made within 5
seconds, so the total time spent waiting for a connection might be
up to 10 seconds.
client_encoding
This sets the client_encoding
configuration parameter for this connection. In addition to
the values accepted by the corresponding server option, you
can use auto
to determine the right
encoding from the current locale in the client
(LC_CTYPE
environment variable on Unix
systems).
options
Specifies command-line options to send to the server at connection
start. For example, setting this to -c geqo=off
sets the
session's value of the geqo
parameter to
off
. Spaces within this string are considered to
separate command-line arguments, unless escaped with a backslash
(\
); write \\
to represent a literal
backslash. For a detailed discussion of the available
options, consult Chapter 20.
application_name
Specifies a value for the application_name configuration parameter.
fallback_application_name
Specifies a fallback value for the application_name configuration parameter.
This value will be used if no value has been given for
application_name
via a connection parameter or the
PGAPPNAME
environment variable. Specifying
a fallback name is useful in generic utility programs that
wish to set a default application name but allow it to be
overridden by the user.
keepalives
Controls whether client-side TCP keepalives are used. The default value is 1, meaning on, but you can change this to 0, meaning off, if keepalives are not wanted. This parameter is ignored for connections made via a Unix-domain socket.
keepalives_idle
Controls the number of seconds of inactivity after which TCP should
send a keepalive message to the server. A value of zero uses the
system default. This parameter is ignored for connections made via a
Unix-domain socket, or if keepalives are disabled.
It is only supported on systems where TCP_KEEPIDLE
or
an equivalent socket option is available, and on Windows; on other
systems, it has no effect.
keepalives_interval
Controls the number of seconds after which a TCP keepalive message
that is not acknowledged by the server should be retransmitted. A
value of zero uses the system default. This parameter is ignored for
connections made via a Unix-domain socket, or if keepalives are disabled.
It is only supported on systems where TCP_KEEPINTVL
or
an equivalent socket option is available, and on Windows; on other
systems, it has no effect.
keepalives_count
Controls the number of TCP keepalives that can be lost before the
client's connection to the server is considered dead. A value of
zero uses the system default. This parameter is ignored for
connections made via a Unix-domain socket, or if keepalives are disabled.
It is only supported on systems where TCP_KEEPCNT
or
an equivalent socket option is available; on other systems, it has no
effect.
tcp_user_timeout
Controls the number of milliseconds that transmitted data may
remain unacknowledged before a connection is forcibly closed.
A value of zero uses the system default. This parameter is
ignored for connections made via a Unix-domain socket.
It is only supported on systems where TCP_USER_TIMEOUT
is available; on other systems, it has no effect.
replication
This option determines whether the connection should use the replication protocol instead of the normal protocol. This is what PostgreSQL replication connections as well as tools such as pg_basebackup use internally, but it can also be used by third-party applications. For a description of the replication protocol, consult Section 53.4.
The following values, which are case-insensitive, are supported:
true
, on
,
yes
, 1
The connection goes into physical replication mode.
database
The connection goes into logical replication mode, connecting to
the database specified in the dbname
parameter.
false
, off
,
no
, 0
The connection is a regular one, which is the default behavior.
In physical or logical replication mode, only the simple query protocol can be used.
gssencmode
This option determines whether or with what priority a secure GSS TCP/IP connection will be negotiated with the server. There are three modes:
disable
only try a non-GSSAPI-encrypted connection
prefer
(default)if there are GSSAPI credentials present (i.e., in a credentials cache), first try a GSSAPI-encrypted connection; if that fails or there are no credentials, try a non-GSSAPI-encrypted connection. This is the default when PostgreSQL has been compiled with GSSAPI support.
require
only try a GSSAPI-encrypted connection
gssencmode
is ignored for Unix domain socket
communication. If PostgreSQL is compiled
without GSSAPI support, using the require
option
will cause an error, while prefer
will be accepted
but libpq will not actually attempt
a GSSAPI-encrypted
connection.
sslmode
This option determines whether or with what priority a secure SSL TCP/IP connection will be negotiated with the server. There are six modes:
disable
only try a non-SSL connection
allow
first try a non-SSL connection; if that fails, try an SSL connection
prefer
(default)first try an SSL connection; if that fails, try a non-SSL connection
require
only try an SSL connection. If a root CA
file is present, verify the certificate in the same way as
if verify-ca
was specified
verify-ca
only try an SSL connection, and verify that the server certificate is issued by a trusted certificate authority (CA)
verify-full
only try an SSL connection, verify that the server certificate is issued by a trusted CA and that the requested server host name matches that in the certificate
See Section 34.19 for a detailed description of how these options work.
sslmode
is ignored for Unix domain socket
communication.
If PostgreSQL is compiled without SSL support,
using options require
, verify-ca
, or
verify-full
will cause an error, while
options allow
and prefer
will be
accepted but libpq will not actually attempt
an SSL
connection.
Note that if GSSAPI encryption is possible,
that will be used in preference to SSL
encryption, regardless of the value of sslmode
.
To force use of SSL encryption in an
environment that has working GSSAPI
infrastructure (such as a Kerberos server), also
set gssencmode
to disable
.
requiressl
This option is deprecated in favor of the sslmode
setting.
If set to 1, an SSL connection to the server
is required (this is equivalent to sslmode
require
). libpq will then refuse
to connect if the server does not accept an
SSL connection. If set to 0 (default),
libpq will negotiate the connection type with
the server (equivalent to sslmode
prefer
). This option is only available if
PostgreSQL is compiled with SSL support.
sslcompression
If set to 1, data sent over SSL connections will be compressed. If set to 0, compression will be disabled. The default is 0. This parameter is ignored if a connection without SSL is made.
SSL compression is nowadays considered insecure and its use is no longer recommended. OpenSSL 1.1.0 disables compression by default, and many operating system distributions disable it in prior versions as well, so setting this parameter to on will not have any effect if the server does not accept compression. PostgreSQL 14 disables compression completely in the backend.
If security is not a primary concern, compression can improve throughput if the network is the bottleneck. Disabling compression can improve response time and throughput if CPU performance is the limiting factor.
sslcert
This parameter specifies the file name of the client SSL
certificate, replacing the default
~/.postgresql/postgresql.crt
.
This parameter is ignored if an SSL connection is not made.
sslkey
This parameter specifies the location for the secret key used for
the client certificate. It can either specify a file name that will
be used instead of the default
~/.postgresql/postgresql.key
, or it can specify a key
obtained from an external “engine” (engines are
OpenSSL loadable modules). An external engine
specification should consist of a colon-separated engine name and
an engine-specific key identifier. This parameter is ignored if an
SSL connection is not made.
sslpassword
This parameter specifies the password for the secret key specified in
sslkey
, allowing client certificate private keys
to be stored in encrypted form on disk even when interactive passphrase
input is not practical.
Specifying this parameter with any non-empty value suppresses the
Enter PEM pass phrase:
prompt that OpenSSL will emit by default
when an encrypted client certificate key is provided to
libpq
.
If the key is not encrypted this parameter is ignored. The parameter has no effect on keys specified by OpenSSL engines unless the engine uses the OpenSSL password callback mechanism for prompts.
There is no environment variable equivalent to this option, and no
facility for looking it up in .pgpass
. It can be
used in a service file connection definition. Users with
more sophisticated uses should consider using OpenSSL engines and
tools like PKCS#11 or USB crypto offload devices.
sslrootcert
This parameter specifies the name of a file containing SSL
certificate authority (CA) certificate(s).
If the file exists, the server's certificate will be verified
to be signed by one of these authorities. The default is
~/.postgresql/root.crt
.
sslcrl
This parameter specifies the file name of the SSL server certificate
revocation list (CRL). Certificates listed in this file, if it
exists, will be rejected while attempting to authenticate the
server's certificate. If neither
sslcrl nor
sslcrldir is set, this setting is
taken as
~/.postgresql/root.crl
.
sslcrldir
This parameter specifies the directory name of the SSL server certificate revocation list (CRL). Certificates listed in the files in this directory, if it exists, will be rejected while attempting to authenticate the server's certificate.
The directory needs to be prepared with the
OpenSSL command
openssl rehash
or c_rehash
. See
its documentation for details.
Both sslcrl
and sslcrldir
can be
specified together.
sslsni
If set to 1 (default), libpq sets the TLS extension “Server Name Indication” (SNI) on SSL-enabled connections. By setting this parameter to 0, this is turned off.
The Server Name Indication can be used by SSL-aware proxies to route connections without having to decrypt the SSL stream. (Note that this requires a proxy that is aware of the PostgreSQL protocol handshake, not just any SSL proxy.) However, SNI makes the destination host name appear in cleartext in the network traffic, so it might be undesirable in some cases.
requirepeer
This parameter specifies the operating-system user name of the
server, for example requirepeer=postgres
.
When making a Unix-domain socket connection, if this
parameter is set, the client checks at the beginning of the
connection that the server process is running under the specified
user name; if it is not, the connection is aborted with an error.
This parameter can be used to provide server authentication similar
to that available with SSL certificates on TCP/IP connections.
(Note that if the Unix-domain socket is in
/tmp
or another publicly writable location,
any user could start a server listening there. Use this parameter
to ensure that you are connected to a server run by a trusted user.)
This option is only supported on platforms for which the
peer
authentication method is implemented; see
Section 21.9.
ssl_min_protocol_version
This parameter specifies the minimum SSL/TLS protocol version to allow
for the connection. Valid values are TLSv1
,
TLSv1.1
, TLSv1.2
and
TLSv1.3
. The supported protocols depend on the
version of OpenSSL used, older versions
not supporting the most modern protocol versions. If not specified,
the default is TLSv1.2
, which satisfies industry
best practices as of this writing.
ssl_max_protocol_version
This parameter specifies the maximum SSL/TLS protocol version to allow
for the connection. Valid values are TLSv1
,
TLSv1.1
, TLSv1.2
and
TLSv1.3
. The supported protocols depend on the
version of OpenSSL used, older versions
not supporting the most modern protocol versions. If not set, this
parameter is ignored and the connection will use the maximum bound
defined by the backend, if set. Setting the maximum protocol version
is mainly useful for testing or if some component has issues working
with a newer protocol.
krbsrvname
Kerberos service name to use when authenticating with GSSAPI.
This must match the service name specified in the server
configuration for Kerberos authentication to succeed. (See also
Section 21.6.)
The default value is normally postgres
,
but that can be changed when
building PostgreSQL via
the --with-krb-srvnam
option
of configure.
In most environments, this parameter never needs to be changed.
Some Kerberos implementations might require a different service name,
such as Microsoft Active Directory which requires the service name
to be in upper case (POSTGRES
).
gsslib
GSS library to use for GSSAPI authentication.
Currently this is disregarded except on Windows builds that include
both GSSAPI and SSPI support. In that case, set
this to gssapi
to cause libpq to use the GSSAPI
library for authentication instead of the default SSPI.
service
Service name to use for additional parameters. It specifies a service
name in pg_service.conf
that holds additional connection parameters.
This allows applications to specify only a service name so connection parameters
can be centrally maintained. See Section 34.17.
target_session_attrs
This option determines whether the session must have certain properties to be acceptable. It's typically used in combination with multiple host names to select the first acceptable alternative among several hosts. There are six modes:
any
(default)any successful connection is acceptable
read-write
session must accept read-write transactions by default (that
is, the server must not be in hot standby mode and
the default_transaction_read_only
parameter
must be off
)
read-only
session must not accept read-write transactions by default (the converse)
primary
server must not be in hot standby mode
standby
server must be in hot standby mode
prefer-standby
first try to find a standby server, but if none of the listed
hosts is a standby server, try again in any
mode