How to provide a password for PostgreSQL's createdb non-interactively?

Question

I have a task in phing where before tests I drop the database if exists and create it. This is run on Jenkins. I want to do it with createdb like this:

<exec command="createdb my_database" />

The thing is that the createdb is asking me to authenticate and adding -Umy_user parameter is not a problem - the issue is that I cannot specify a password in the createdb command. And I don't want to create a role for the system user ("jenkins" in this case). Is there a solution for that ?

Varney

Answer 1

createdb will use the PGPASSWORD environment variable if it's set, that's one simple way of providing a password in non-interactive runs.

Another option would be to set up a .pgpass file in the home directory of the unix user launching the createdb.

Whet

With .pgpass, I initially tried entering a line specifying the name of the database I wanted to create. However, I still got the password prompt on createdb. Seems like the database name has to be *. – Dismal

What will be used for username, if I use PGPASSWORD var? Will the username default to root? – Cement

@JamesWierzba: the db username defaults to the OS username. – Embank

Can you add an example how to do with .pgpass? I've .pgpass set up and properly working with psql, but it doesn't work with createdb. – Interlunation