Connecting Multiple Databases

Joystick supports connecting multiple databases from different providers to your app. Instead of being able to communicate with a single database, your app can send data where it's best handled. In a Joystick app, you can add multiple databases from different providers (e.g., MongoDB and PostgreSQL), or, you can add multiple from the same provider.

From Different Providers

To add databases from different providers, add one object to the config.databases array for each provider:

{
  "config": {
    "databases": [
      {
        "provider": "mongodb",
        "users": true,
        "options": {}
      },
      {
        "provider": "postgresql",
        "users": true,
        "options": {}
      }
    ],
    "i18n": { ... },
    "middleware": {},
    "email": { ... }
  },
  "global": {},
  "public": {},
  "private": {}
}

In development, Joystick will attempt to start each database defined in the config.databases array locally (assuming the database has already been installed), starting databases from the current app port (default of 2600) plus 10 (the default database port starts at 2610). In the example above, we'd expect MongoDB to be started on port 2610 and PostgreSQL to be started on port 2611.

In your app, the driver for each database will be mapped to process.databases.<provider_name> (e.g., process.databases.mongodb or process.databases.postgresql).

From Identical Providers

If you'd like to use multiple databases with the same provider key, this is supported, but with some caveats related to naming:

{
  "config": {
    "databases": [
      {
        "provider": "mongodb",
        "users": true,
        "options": {}
      },
      {
        "provider": mongodb",
        "users": true,
        "options": {}
      }
    ],
    "i18n": { ... },
    "middleware": {},
    "email": { ... }
  },
  "global": {},
  "public": {},
  "private": {}
}

In the above example, assuming an app port of 2600, we'd expect to MongoDB servers to be started for us: one on port 2610 and one on 2611. Because both are using the same provider name, though, Joystick will automatically map these databases to process.databases using the naming convention process.databases.<provider_name>_<database_port>. In this case, we'd expect to get drivers for each database at process.databases.mongodb_2610 and process.databases.mongodb_2611.

Specifying a name

Because tying the name of the driver in your code to the port number isn't ideal—especially in a non-development environment—when using multiple databases of the same provider, you can specify a name property in the config:

{
  "config": {
    "databases": [
      {
        "provider": "mongodb",
        "name": "user_data",
        "users": true,
        "options": {}
      },
      {
        "provider": mongodb",
        "name": "analytics_data",
        "users": true,
        "options": {}
      }
    ],
    "i18n": { ... },
    "middleware": {},
    "email": { ... }
  },
  "global": {},
  "public": {},
  "private": {}
}

When a name is provided, the database will be mapped using that name. In the example above, we would expect to get drivers mapped to process.databases.mongodb.user_data and process.databases.mongodb.analytics_data.