Postgres DB URL string from a K8s deployment yaml file - postgresql

Question

I am trying to contact from a customized helm chart to a fully managed Postgres service on azure, and then I have to put the url connection string according to the app I want to deploy.
I want to ask which value should be the DATABASE_URL at the helm chart deployment?
My situation is the following:
I want to use an external Azure managed PostgreSQL and no the PostgreSQL container that comes with the helm chart.
So in consequence, I modified the DATABASE_URL value, given here to connect to the container inside K8s, I've modified in this way:
name: DATABASE_URL
# value: "postgres://{{ .Values.postgresql.postgresqlUsername }}:$(POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD)#{{ .Release.Name }}-postgresql"
value: "postgres://nmbrs#postgresql-nmb-psfc-stag:$(POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD)#postgresql-nmb-psfc-stag.postgres.database.azure.com/postfacto-staging-db"
but I am getting this error
/usr/local/lib/ruby/2.7.0/uri/generic.rb:208:in `initialize': the scheme postgres does not accept registry part: nmbrs#postgresql-nmb-psfc-stag:mypassword*#postgresql-nmb-psfc-stag.postgres.database.azure.com (or bad hostname?) (URI::InvalidURIError)
Which should be the real DATABASE_URL value if I want to contact to a fully Postgres managed service?
Which is the equivalent value to this?:
value: "postgres://{{ .Values.postgresql.postgresqlUsername }}:$(POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD)#{{ .Release.Name }}-postgresql"
I mean is
postgres//<username>:<my-pg-password>#<WHICH VALUE SHOULD BE HERE?>
What is the value of {{ .Release.Name }}-postgresql" ?
Just for the record, my customize postfacto/deployment/helm/templates/deployment.yaml is this
UPDATE
I changed the value for this
- name: DATABASE_URL
# value: "postgres://{{ .Values.postgresql.postgresqlUsername }}:$(POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD)#{{ .Release.Name }}-postgresql"
# value: "postgres://nmbrs#postgresql-nmb-psfc-stag:$(POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD)#postgresql-nmb-psfc-stag.postgres.database.azure.com:5432/postfacto-staging-db"
value: "postgres://postgresql-nmb-psfc-stag.postgres.database.azure.com/postfacto-staging-db"
And I got a different error:
Caused by:
PG::ConnectionBad: FATAL: Invalid Username specified. Please check the Username and retry connection. The Username should be in <username#hostname> format.
FATAL: Invalid Username specified. Please check the Username and retry connection. The Username should be in <username#hostname> format.
But is not clear how should be the syntax format since this article says:
Next, encode the database credentials. Use the format DB_ADAPTER://USER:PASSWORD#HOSTNAME/DB_NAME. If you are using mysql with a user ‘deploy’ and a password ‘secret’ on 127.0.0.1 and have a database railsapp, run
The format DB_ADAPTER://USER:PASSWORD#HOSTNAME/DB_NAME, it is the same I was using at the beginning

Answer 1

I think the problem with your connection string is, its username has a special character #, which might be breaking the connection string format and causing the validation error.
Your value
- name: DATABASE_URL
value: "postgres://nmbrs#postgresql-nmb-psfc-stag:$(POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD)#postgresql-nmb-psfc-stag.postgres.database.azure.com/postfacto-staging-db"
You can try to do an URL encoding for the username part like
- name: DATABASE_URL
value: "postgres://nmbrs%40postgresql-nmb-psfc-stag:$(POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD)#postgresql-nmb-psfc-stag.postgres.database.azure.com/postfacto-staging-db"

Answer 2

From what I see this helm chart is poorly written, and badly assumes things i.e. the DATABASE_URL has is build to only properly format a kubernetes posgress helm release and nothing else.
What I would suggest:
Instead of installing this chart on k8s by helm, use helm template functionality to locally render the template.
Edit the exported plain manifest, to match your needs
Go to your Azure DB, and get it ConnectionString, depending on how you mange your secrets in k8s, pass it to the DATABASE_URL environment
Manually apply the manifests