Ruby on Rails with managed PostgreSQL and MySQL

Ruby on Rails is a web framework for Ruby. Its ActiveRecord ORM maps tables to models, manages a per-process connection pool, and evolves your schema with migrations.

How does the integration work?

Appwrite native PostgreSQL and MySQL databases are standard engines that Appwrite provisions in your project's region, each with its own hostname, credentials, and TLS. ActiveRecord connects to them through its regular postgresql and mysql2 adapters, so models, migrations, and the rest of the Rails toolchain work with no Appwrite-specific configuration.

A Rails app under Puma is a long-running process, so it pairs naturally with a direct connection to the engine and a pool sized to your connection budget.

How to implement

To connect Rails to an Appwrite native database, there are several steps you must complete:

Step 1: Create a native database

Create an account on Appwrite Cloud if you haven't already. In your project, go to Databases, click Create database, and select PostgreSQL or MySQL from the Native databases group. Pick a specification and click Create database. The database becomes ready within a few minutes.

For PostgreSQL, open the database, click Credentials, and copy the connection string from the DSN or .env tab. For MySQL, read connectionString from the database object with mysql.get() and an API key that has the databases.read scope.

Step 2: Install the driver gem

Add gem 'pg' for PostgreSQL or gem "mysql2", "~> 0.5" for MySQL to your Gemfile, then run bundle install. Both gems build against native client libraries, so install the PostgreSQL or MySQL client headers first.

Step 3: Configure database.yml

Keep the connection string in DATABASE_URL, which Rails reads automatically, and set TLS and the pool size in config/database.yml:

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://admin:<password>@db-<hash>.<region>.appwrite.center:5432/<database>?sslmode=require"

# config/database.yml
production:
  adapter: postgresql
  url: <%= ENV["DATABASE_URL"] %>
  pool: <%= ENV.fetch("RAILS_MAX_THREADS", 5) %>

DATABASE_URL="mysql://admin.<hash>:<password>@db-<hash>.<region>.appwrite.center:3306/default"
DB_SSL_MODE="required"

# config/database.yml
production:
  adapter: mysql2
  url: <%= ENV["DATABASE_URL"] %>
  ssl_mode: <%= ENV.fetch("DB_SSL_MODE", "required") %>
  max_connections: <%= ENV.fetch("RAILS_MAX_THREADS", 5) %>

Each Puma worker has its own pool, so the backend connection count is roughly the pool size times workers times server instances. Keep that within your specification's connection limit.

Step 4: Run migrations

Run migrations with DATABASE_URL pointing at the direct port, 5432 or 3306, because DDL needs a session-level connection:

bin/rails db:migrate

Step 5: Test the integration

Create a record and read it back from the Rails console, for example User.create!(email: 'ada@example.com') followed by User.order(created_at: :desc).limit(10).

If you route through the connection pooler instead of connecting directly, prefer session mode. On the default transaction-mode pooler, port 6432 for PostgreSQL or 6033 for MySQL, add prepared_statements: false to database.yml, because server-side prepared statements are tied to one backend connection. To test migrations in CI, export a PostgreSQL or MySQL branch's connection string as DATABASE_URL and run bin/rails db:migrate.

Read more about Ruby on Rails and Appwrite Databases

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