pg-ssl

A function to parse libpq-style environment variables for node-postgres ssl configuration

Usage

const { Pool } = require('pg')
const { parseSsl } = require('pg-ssl')

const pool = new Pool({
    ssl: parseSsl()
})

The resulting config contains the following properties:

• ca - contents of a SSL certificate authority (CA) certificate file if specified by PGSSLROOTCERT
• cert - contents of a client SSL certificate if specified by PGSSLCERT
• key - contents of the secret key used for the client SSL certificate if specified by PGSSLKEY
• rejectUnauthorized - defaults to true

Why?

Although node-postgres supports environment variables like PGHOST, PGUSER, and PGPASSWORD that match the ones defined by libpq it doesn't support SSL-related environment variables like PGSSLMODE, PGSSLCERT, PGSSLKEY, or PGSSLROOTCERT. These are useful, especially if you're connecting to cloud SQL databases requiring these parameters for a secure connection.

The parseSsl function looks to these environment variables to build an object that maps to the options for tls.connect, including support for rejectUnauthorized, checkServerIdentity and servername.

If you are getting an error message like UNABLE_TO_VERIFY_LEAF_SIGNATURE when connecting to your database, then this module can help you correctly set up your SSL parameters for node postgres.

Options

Use options to override environment variables or specify custom options.

• sslmode - If set to disabled, returns false. Otherwise, try to parse other options. Defaults to PGSSLMODE.
• sslrootcert - The path to the root SSL certificate. Defaults to PGSSLROOTCERT.
• sslcert - The path to the client SSL certificate. Defaults to PGSSLCERT.
• sslkey - The path to the secret key for the client SSL certificate. Defaults to PGSSLKEY.
• rejectUnauthorized - If not false, the server certificate is verified against the supplied CAs. See tls.connect. Defaults to true.
• servername - Server name for the SNI (Server Name Indication) TLS extension. See tls.connect.
• checkServerIdentity - A callback function to be used (instead of the built-in one) when checking the server's host name against the certificate. See tls.connect.

More Examples

For a Google Cloud SQL connection specify the servername using the project ID my-project and the instance ID my-sql-instance to match the name specified by the client certificate, otherwise you'll receive NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED. Your environment would look like:

PGHOST=38.X.X.X
PGPORT=5432
PGUSER=my_user
PGPASSWORD=MyP@ssw0rd!
PGDATABASE=my_db
PGSSLMODE=verify-ca
PGSSLROOTCERT=/path/to/server-ca.pem
PGSSLCERT=/path/to/client-cert.pem
PGSSLKEY=/path/to/client-key.pem

And your Postgres would look like:

const pool = new Pool({
    ssl: parseSsl({
        servername: 'my-project/my-sql-instance'
    })
})

Additional Details

If the sslmode option or PGSSLMODE environment variable is set to disabled, then parseSsl returns false.

Likewise, if neither sslrootcert/PGSSLROOTCERT, sslcert/PGSSLCERT, or sslkey/PGSSLKEY are specified, then parseSsl will return false.