Native bindings between node.js & libpq are provided by the node-pg-native package. node-postgres can consume this package & use the native bindings to access the PostgreSQL server while giving you the same interface that is used with the JavaScript version of the library.
You need PostgreSQL client libraries & tools installed. An easy way to check is to type . If is in your path, you should be good to go. If it’s not in your path you’ll need to consult operating specific instructions on how to go about getting it there.
Some ways I’ve done it in the past:
- On macOS:
- On Ubuntu/Debian and Debian-based Node images:
- On RHEL/CentOS:
- On Windows:
- Install Visual Studio C++ (successfully built with Express 2010). Express is free.
- Install PostgreSQL ()
- Add your Postgre Installation’s folder to the system path (i.e. ).
- Make sure that both and are in that folder.
Install and them:
Once is installed instead of requiring a or constructor from you do the following:
When you access the property on it will automatically require the package and wrap it in the same API.
Care has been taken to normalize between the two, but there might still be edge cases where things behave subtly differently due to the nature of using libpq over handling the binary protocol directly in JavaScript, so it’s recommended you chose to either use the JavaScript driver or the native bindings both in development and production. For what its worth: I use the pure JavaScript driver because the JavaScript driver is more portable (doesn’t need a compiler), and the pure JavaScript driver is plenty fast.
Some of the modules using advanced features of PostgreSQL such as pg-query-stream, pg-cursor,and pg-copy-streams need to operate directly on the binary stream and therefore are incompatible with the native bindings.