Can't get Django to use Postgres

Question

I am trying to switch a local Django project from the default sqlite3 database to a postgres v.14 database. I've been through several tutorials but nothing seems to work and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Steps I've performed:

1. In my postgres shell I can see there is a database called testdb.
2. I've created a Postgres user bb with password foobar
3. I ran the following command to grant bb access: GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE testdb TO bb;
4. Back in my virtual environment I run brew services start postgresql which prints:

==> Successfully started `postgresql@14` (label: homebrew.mxcl.postgresql@14)

5. In my Django project's settings.py I have the following database configuration:

DATABASES = {
    "default": {
        "ENGINE": "django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2",
        "NAME": "testdb",
        "USER": "bb",
        "PASSWORD": "foobar",
        "HOST": "127.0.0.1",
        "PORT": "5432",
    }
}

6. Running python manage.py makemigrations produces the following error:

/opt/miniconda3/envs/django-db/lib/python3.9/site-packages/django/core/management/commands/makemigrations.py:158: RuntimeWarning: Got an error checking a consistent migration history performed for database connection 'default': connection to server at "127.0.0.1", port 5432 failed: FATAL:  password authentication failed for user "bb"

  warnings.warn(
No changes detected

Is there a step I've missed somewhere? No idea why there's no connection to the server available.

Answer 1

I have two suggestions as to what you can try.

You could try to access the database using a service file and password file as explained in the Django docs here

Secondly, the problem could be that your pg_hba.conf file do not allow the testdb user to access the database by using a password. Here is an example of how you could configure your database to allow access by using a password for the user bb

# for user bb connected via local IPv4 or IPv6 connections, always require 
# md5 when trying to access database with name testdb
host    testdb   bb        127.0.0.1/32          md5
host    testdb   bb        ::1/128               md5

You can read more about pg_hba.conf in the docs.

Answer 2

I am using postgresql in development. I am going to copy my setup below, and also suggest what I would try. Hopefully some of this helps you.

My setup

I am using dj-database-url to simplify the database dictionary.

# settings.py
import dj_database_url

ALLOWED_HOSTS=['127.0.0.1', 'localhost']
# (I use python-decouple, so the line above is a bit different
#  in my code, but this is equivalent and simpler to read)

DATABASES = {
    "default": dj_database_url.config(
        default="postgres://bb:foobar@localhost:5432/testdb" # (same here)
        conn_max_age=600,
    )
}

I adjusted the database url to the information you provided in the question. The format is like postgres://{user}:{password}@{hostname}:{port}/{database-name} - this post has more information about it.

What I would try

• From what it says in this link, I would check the ALLOWED_HOSTS variable.
• I would also check if changing "127.0.0.1" for "localhost" has any effect.