How to store a login path for psql?

Question

I have a postgres instance on Amazon RDS and I want to store the login path so I don't have to remember the host name/username/password to log in each time. In mysql I can simply create a login_path. Is there a postgres equivalent I'm not seeing. What is a common approach to avoid this problem?

Answer 1

You can use OS environment variables or setup the pgpass configuration file

Set the values for the following OS envvars:

PGHOST, PGPORT, PGDATABASE, PGUSERNAME, PGPASSWORD

Or, do it in a file:

In Windows, create/edit the file %appdata%\postgresql\pgpass.conf

In Unix-like systems it's ~/.pgpass

And add the following info in this format:

hostname:port:database:username:password 

Restart your shell and you're good to go.