Sinatra App on Heroku ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: PGError: ERROR: - postgresql

Question

SCENARIO:
I currently have anapplication on Heroku that is Sinatra Application + ActiveRecord. What currently works:
• I am able to view static pages of my site
• I am able to run migrations
• I am able to push my local development db to my Heroku DB (heroku db:push postgres://localhost/dev)
• I am able to pull from the Heroku DB down to my localhost DB (heroku db:pull postgres://localhost/dev)
THE ERROR:
When I navigate to a page that makes a simple query like:
#pics = Picture.find(:all)
I get this error in my log file
DEBUG -- : NoMethodError: undefined method `values' for #<PGresult:0x00000002844098>: SHOW client_min_messages
DEBUG -- : PGError: ERROR: invalid value for parameter "client_min_messages": ""
: SET client_min_messages TO ''
ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid - PGError: ERROR: invalid value for parameter "client_min_messages": ""
/app/.bundle/gems/ruby/1.9.1/gems/activerecord-3.1.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:592:in `async_exec'
At this point I'm not sure what is wrong so I decided to log onto the heroku console and run this command to see if my tables are in the DB
> heroku console
> ActiveRecord::Base.connection.tables
AND I get a similar errors
ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: PGError: ERROR: invalid value for parameter "client_min_messages": ""
: SET client_min_messages TO ''
/app/.bundle/gems/ruby/1.9.1/gems/activerecord-3.1.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:592:in `async_exec'
/app/.bundle/gems/ruby/1.9.1/gems/activerecord-3.1.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:592:in `block in execute'
/app/.bundle/gems/ruby/1.9.1/gems/activerecord-3.1.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract_adapter.rb:244:in `block in log'
/app/.bundle/gems/ruby/1.9.1/gems/activesupport-3.1.3/lib/active_support/notifications/instrumenter.rb:21:in `instrument'
Then I decided to try this in the console...
> ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection
> ActiveRecord::AdapterNotSpecified: ActiveRecord::AdapterNotSpecified
/app/.bundle/gems/ruby/1.9.1/gems/activerecord-3.1.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_specification.rb:54:in `establish_connection'
/home/heroku_rack/lib/console.rb:158:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'
/home/heroku_rack/lib/console.rb:148:in `eval'
/home/heroku_rack/lib/console.rb:148:in `_eval'
At this point it would seem that I have no tables and adapter connection but how can that be when I'm able to run migrations and push and pull from the Heroku DB?
UPDATE 1 - NOT MUCH FURTHER ALONG BUT MORE INSIGHT
So I decided to start from scratch and do this over again. I seem to have made some progress but I'm stuck. At re-ran my scenario I mentioned above and succeed. So my database, migration and data are all in the DB. But my app still cannot connect to the DB. BUT what's weird is my console interaction.
> heroku console
> ActiveRecord::Base.connection_config
> {:adapter=>"postgresql", :database=>"1e2e12e21e", :username=>"1e2e12e21e", :password=>"i2j3i23joo12", :host=>"1e2-12e-2e1212-e2e2e1.compute-1.amazonaws.com", :port=>5432, :encoding=>"unicode"}
NOTE: I replaced the real details with this fake stuff just to illustrate
> ActiveRecord::Base.connection_handler
> #<ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::ConnectionHandler:0x00000002f8a578 #connection_pools={"….
NOTE: This a really long string but it has content
> ActiveRecord::Base.connected?
> false
At this point I really don't get it? I don't get how I can keep running db migrations, keeping push and pulling data, log into Heroku Console see my connection_config details, BUT when I run my app internal server error. AND when I run ActiveRecord::Base.connection.tables in heroku console I get ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: PGError: ERROR: invalid value for parameter "client_min_messages": ""
Any thoughts on what I could be doing wrong?
FINAL UPDATE
Here is what the problem is:
Heroku support kindly pointed to me to a known issue with activerecord 3.1.3. It's a bug that should be fixed in future updates: https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/92a3c487bb0d125c437e53a7f45c31fcca97f2d9
How to solve the problem:
I decided to use a much lower version of activerecord in my gemfile gem "activerecord", "~> 3.0.9 and my site is up and running with no problems so far.
Why I never tried this out before I don't know. I hope this post anyone else.

Answer 1

I had this problem for a long time and it was driving me nuts. I couldn't find a solution anywhere (and many rails updates passed by not solving the "problem"), so i decided to just hunt down the issue myself. It turned out to be an easy fix. Just add an additional key, value pair: :min_messages => "warn" (or whatever message level you want) to the ActiveRecord setup in your configure block. here's what I'm using in my Sinatra app's right now, using Sinatra 1.3.2 and ActiveRecord 3.2.2:
db = URI.parse(ENV['DATABASE_URL'] || "postgres://user:password#localhost/database")
adapter = (db.scheme == "postres") ? "postgresql" : db.scheme
ActiveRecord::Base.configurations[:production] = {
:adapter => adapter,
:username => db.user,
:password => db.password,
:port => db.port,
:database => db.path.sub(%r(^/),""),
:host => db.host,
:min_messages => "warn"
}
unless ActiveRecord::Base.connected?
ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection ActiveRecord::Base.configurations[:production]
ActiveRecord::Base.logger = Logger.new(STDOUT)
end
hope this helps you and any other people having these issues!

Answer 2

None of the other suggestions worked for me. I ultimately fixed this by switching to the Heroku cedar stack:
heroku create your app --stack cedar

Answer 3

I had this problem on both bamboo-ree-1.8.7 and bamboo-mri-1.9.2 stacks. The application worked fine on localhost, and migrated OK on heroku, but reading the database inside the heroku web stack failed with a client_min_messages complaint.
Setting the :min_messages (as suggested in another answer) to either "warn" or "warning" produced different errors.
Forcing my ActiveRecord down to 3.0.11 (from 3.2.3) resolved the issue. (Not that I see anything in AR to explain this. I speculate it's related to differing postgres versions ... I'm using 9.0.3, suspect the heroku bamboo shared is 8.4)

Answer 4

Pushing this up in my gem file worked for me.
group :production do
gem 'pg'
gem 'activerecord', '~> 3.0.9'
end