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Databases

Databases are an essential part of every application and are used to store and manage data. On Appsmith, you can directly connect to supported databases and run queries to read and write data on the Appsmith query editor.

Connecting to a database​

important

If you are a self-hosted user, you may need to whitelist the IP address of the Appsmith deployment on your database instance or VPC before connecting to a database.

18.223.74.85 and 3.131.104.27 are the IP addresses of the Appsmith cloud instances that need to be whitelisted.

How to connect to a database

To connect to a database:

  1. On the Explorer tab, click the + icon next to Datasources.
  2. Choose a database from the list of datasources that Appsmith can connect to.
  3. Click the edit pencil icon next to the default name to rename the datasource.
  4. Provide the configuration details required to connect to the database. You may need to contact your database administrator to whitelist Appsmith cloud.
  5. Click Test to verify that Appsmith can connect to the database using the details you provided.
  6. Save the datasource. The configuration details aren't saved/updated until the Save button is clicked. When the datasource has been added successfully, a success message appears at the top of the app window.
tip

If you want to connect to a local database, you can use a service like ngrok to expose it. For more information, see How to connect to local database on Appsmith.

Native databases​

Appsmith can also seamlessly connect with most other databases through the RESTful API plugin. For more information, see Integrations

Sample databases​

Appsmith provides two sample datasets to help you connect the data and test the platform.

  • MongoDB database with a movies collection
  • PostgreSQL database with a users table
Important

The sample databases are public and shared by all users, so ensure that you don't write any confidential information during testing. As data may be added or updated by different users, the databases are automatically reset every day, so any updates made to these databases are temporary.

How to use sample database
  1. On the Explorer tab, click the + icon next to Datasources.
  2. Select the sample users PostgreSQL database.
  3. Go to Datasources and click the Active tab. Select the New API + button next to the users sample database.
  4. Write the query in the query editor and click the Run button to execute it. For example:
SELECT * FROM users;

The select query retrieves all the data from the users table. You can display the query results in a Table widget by binding the data in the Table Data property.

General notes​

info

Appsmith encrypts all your datasource credentials and stores them securely. Appsmith also doesn't store any data returned from your datasources and acts only as a proxy layer to orchestrate the execution of Queries. As Appsmith is an open source framework, you can deploy it on-premise, and audit it to ensure none of your data leaves your VPC. For more information, see Security.

Connection pooling​

Appsmith creates a new connection with the database server when you first connect the database to your application. All subsequent queries executed by Appsmith against your database then re-use this connection to ensure that your queries are executed at run-time. If an idle connection is closed by the database server, Appsmith creates a new connection while executing the next query.

For certain database plugins such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, MS SQL, and Redshift, Appsmith explicitly creates and maintains a connection pool because, usually, a single connection isn't designed to handle multiple simultaneous queries.

The maximum number of connections in a pool is limited to 5. Please note that max 5 connections in a pool doesn't mean that a max of 5 queries can be run concurrently using this pool. The number of concurrent queries that this pool can run is usually much higher.

Troubleshooting​

If you are experiencing difficulties with connecting datasources in Appsmith, you can refer to the Datasource troubleshooting guide for assistance. If you need further support, you can reach out on Discord or ask questions on the community forum.

Further reading​