Stackhero for MariaDB

This add-on is operated by Stackhero

MariaDB on dedicated instances, up-to-date versions and super attractive prices.

Stackhero for MariaDB

Last updated December 28, 2022

Stackhero for MariaDB provides a managed MariaDB instance running on a fully dedicated instance.

With your Stackhero for MariaDB add-on you will get:

  • A private instance (dedicated VM) for high performances and security
  • A dedicated public IP (v4)
  • TLS encryption (aka SSL)
  • A full access to PhpMyAdmin
  • An automatic backup every 24 hours
  • One click to update to new MariaDB versions

All MariaDB/MySQL clients can connect to Stackhero for MariaDB and there is a MariaDB/MySQL client library for almost every language out there, including Ruby, Node.js, Java, Python, Clojure and Erlang.

Provisioning the add-on

Stackhero for MariaDB can be attached to a Heroku application via the CLI:

A list of all plans available can be found here.

$ heroku addons:create ah-mariadb-stackhero --app <your app name>
-----> Adding ah-mariadb-stackhero to sharp-mountain-4005... done

After you provision Stackhero for MariaDB, the STACKHERO_MARIADB_HOST and STACKHERO_MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD config variables are available in your app’s configuration. They contain the URLs to your MariaDB instance as its root password.

You can see the content of those variables via the heroku config:get command:

$ heroku config:get STACKHERO_MARIADB_HOST

After you install Stackhero for MariaDB, your application should be configured to fully integrate with the add-on.

Local setup

After you provision the add-on, it’s necessary to locally replicate its config variables so your development environment can operate against the service.

Use the Heroku Local command-line tool to configure, run and manage process types specified in your app’s Procfile. Heroku Local reads configuration variables from a .env file. To view all of your app’s config variables, type heroku config. Use the following command for each value that you want to add to your .env file:

$ heroku config:get STACKHERO_MARIADB_HOST -s  >> .env

Credentials and other sensitive configuration values should not be committed to source-control. In Git, exclude the .env file with: echo .env >> .gitignore.

For more information, see the Heroku Local article.

Connect to MariaDB from your favorite language

You can use almost any client library available for your language that is able to connect to a MariaDB or a MySQL server.

We recommend to create a dedicated user (see sections below). If you don’t want to, you can connect to MariaDB using the “root” user and the following environment variables:

  • STACKHERO_MARIADB_HOST
  • STACKHERO_MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD

If you have created a dedicated user, you can use these environment variables:

  • STACKHERO_MARIADB_HOST
  • STACKHERO_MARIADB_USER
  • STACKHERO_MARIADB_PASSWORD

Connect to MariaDB from PHP

Connect PHP to MariaDB with MySQLi (object-oriented style)

<?php

$hostname = '<XXXXXX>.stackhero-network.com';
$user = 'root';
$password = '<yourPassword>';
$database = 'root'; // You shouldn't use the "root" database. This is just for the example. The recommended way is to create a dedicated database (and user) in PhpMyAdmin and use it then here.

$mysqli = mysqli_init();
$mysqliConnected = $mysqli->real_connect($hostname, $user, $password, $database, NULL, NULL, MYSQLI_CLIENT_SSL);
if (!$mysqliConnected) {
  die("Connect Error: " . $mysqli->connect_error());
}

echo 'Success... ' . $mysqli->host_info . "\n";

$mysqli->close();

?>

Connect PHP to MariaDB with MySQLi (procedural style)

<?php

$hostname = '<XXXXXX>.stackhero-network.com';
$user = 'root';
$password = '<yourPassword>';
$database = 'root'; // You shouldn't use the "root" database. This is just for the example. The recommended way is to create a dedicated database (and user) in PhpMyAdmin and use it then here.

$mysqli = mysqli_init();
$mysqliConnected = mysqli_real_connect($mysqli, $hostname, $user, $password, $database, NULL, NULL, MYSQLI_CLIENT_SSL);
if (!$mysqliConnected) {
  die("Connect Error: " . mysqli_connect_error($mysqli));
}

echo 'Success... ' . mysqli_get_host_info($mysqli) . "\n";

mysqli_close($mysqli);

?>

Connect PHP to MariaDB with PDO

<?php

$hostname = '<XXXXXX>.stackhero-network.com';
$user = 'root';
$password = '<yourPassword>';
$database = 'root'; // You shouldn't use the "root" database. This is just for the example. The recommended way is to create a dedicated database (and user) in PhpMyAdmin and use it then here.

$dsn = "mysql:host=$hostname;dbname=$database";

$options = array(
  // See below if you have an error like "Uncaught PDOException: PDO::__construct(): SSL operation failed with code 1. OpenSSL Error messages: error:0A000086:SSL routines::certificate verify failed".
  PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_CAPATH => '/etc/ssl/certs/',
  // PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_CA => 'isrgrootx1.pem',
  PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_VERIFY_SERVER_CERT => true,
);

$pdo = new PDO($dsn, $user, $password, $options);

$stm = $pdo->query("SELECT VERSION()");
$version = $stm->fetch();

echo "You are connected to a database running version " . $version[0] . "\n";

?>

Handle error “SSL operation failed with code 1”

If you get an error like Uncaught PDOException: PDO::__construct(): SSL operation failed with code 1. OpenSSL Error messages: error:0A000086:SSL routines::certificate verify failed, this is probably because the /etc/ssl/certs/ directory doesn’t contain CA certificates.

If you have access to the system that is running your PHP code, you can install these certificates like this:

  • On Ubuntu, run apt-get install ca-certificates

  • On Alpine Linux, run apk add ca-certificates

If you don’t have a direct access to the system running your PHP code, you can install the certificate manually:

  1. Download this certificate on your computer: https://letsencrypt.org/certs/isrgrootx1.pem
  2. Add this isrgrootx1.pem file to your PHP project files.
  3. Comment the code PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_CAPATH => '/etc/ssl/certs/'
  4. Uncomment the code PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_CA => 'isrgrootx1.pem'

Connect PHP to MariaDB with using credentials from environment variables

We recommend to not keep your credentials in your source code but use environment variables in place.

Here is how to retrieve these credentials:

$hostname = parse_url(getenv('STACKHERO_MARIADB_HOST'));
$user = parse_url(getenv('STACKHERO_MARIADB_USER'));
$password = parse_url(getenv('STACKHERO_MARIADB_PASSWORD'));
$database = parse_url(getenv('STACKHERO_MARIADB_USER'));

Connect from Laravel to MariaDB

Edit the file config/database.php and replace the mysql with the following configuration:

'mysql' => [
  'driver' => 'mysql',
  'host' => env('STACKHERO_MARIADB_HOST'),
  'port' => 3306,
  'username' => env('STACKHERO_MARIADB_USER'),
  'password' => env('STACKHERO_MARIADB_PASSWORD'),
  'database' => env('STACKHERO_MARIADB_USER'),
  'charset' => 'utf8mb4',
  'collation' => 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
  'prefix' => '',
  'prefix_indexes' => true,
  'strict' => true,
  'engine' => null,
  'sslmode' => 'require',
  'options' => extension_loaded('pdo_mysql') ? array_filter([
      PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_CA => env('MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_CA'),
  ]) : [],
],

How to connect from Node.js to MariaDB

In this example we will use mysql2 package with promises support. To install it simply run this command: npm install --save mysql2

const mysql = require('mysql2/promise');

(async () => {
  const db = await mysql.createConnection({
    host: process.env.STACKHERO_MARIADB_HOST,
    user: 'root',
    password: process.env.STACKHERO_MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD,
  });

  // Create database stackherotest if not exists yet
  await db.query('CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS stackherotest');


  // Create table users if not exists yet
  await db.query('CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `stackherotest`.`users` '
    + '('
    + '`userId` INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL,'
    + '`name` VARCHAR(128) NOT NULL,'
    + '`address` TEXT NOT NULL,'
    + '`email` VARCHAR(265) NOT NULL'
    + ') '
    + 'ENGINE = InnoDB;');


  // Insert a fake user
  await db.query(
    'INSERT INTO `stackherotest`.`users` (`userId`, `name`, `address`, `email`) VALUES ?',
    [
      [
        Math.round(Math.random() * 100000), // Generate a fake userId
        'User name', // column 'name'
        'User address', // column 'address'
        'user@email.com' // column 'email'
      ]
    ]
  );


  // Count number of rows in table users
  const [ usersCount ] = await db.query('SELECT COUNT(*) AS `cpt` FROM `stackherotest`.`users`');
  console.log(`There is now ${usersCount[0].cpt} in table "users"`);


  // Close the connection to MariaDB
  await db.end();

})().catch(error => {
  console.error('');
  console.error('🐞 An error occurred!');
  console.error(error);
  process.exit(1);
});

Connect from Node.js/NestJS/TypeORM to MariaDB

To connect from Node.js/NestJS/TypeORM, you have to add the ssl option like in this example: javascript TypeOrmModule.forRoot({ type: 'mysql', host: process.env.STACKHERO_MARIADB_HOST, port: 3306, username: 'root', password: process.env.STACKHERO_MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD, database: 'root', entities: [], synchronize: true, ssl: {} })

Connect to Stackhero dashboard

Stackhero dashboard allows you to see your instance usage, restart it, and apply updates. It also gives you the ability to access the PhpMyAdmin UI to consult your MariaDB data directly in a graphical way.

You can access the dashboard via the CLI:

$ heroku addons:open ah-mariadb-stackhero
Opening ah-mariadb-stackhero for sharp-mountain-4005

or by visiting the Heroku Dashboard and selecting the application in question. Select Stackhero for MariaDB from the Add-ons menu.

Connect to PhpMyAdmin

PhpMyAdmin is a web UI that gives you access to your MariaDB in a graphical way.

To connect to it, simply open your browser and connect to the hostname of your service (STACKHERO_MARIADB_HOST), like https://XXXXXX.stackhero-network.com. Then log in with the root user or with any other user you have created.

Create a user on MariaDB

A best practice is to create a user for your application other than the default “root”.

The easiest way to do that is to use PhpMyAdmin.

  1. In PhpMyAdmin, click on User accounts on top.

  2. Click on Add user account.

  3. Fill the user creation form:

    • Define an account name (generally your application name)
    • Click on “Generate password” to get a secured password (copy it to your clipboard)
    • Check the “Create database with same name and grant all privileges”

Once validated, the user will be created as its database which will get the same name as the username.

Add your user to environment variables

You can now define your environment variables as follow:

$ heroku config:set STACKHERO_MARIADB_USER=<yourUserName>
$ heroku config:set STACKHERO_MARIADB_PASSWORD=<yourUserPassword>

And if you need to access them locally, for development purporse for example, you can save them to you .env file:

$ heroku config:get STACKHERO_MARIADB_USER -s  >> .env
$ heroku config:get STACKHERO_MARIADB_PASSWORD -s  >> .env

Upgrading your plan

You cannot downgrade an existing add-on.

Application owners should carefully manage the migration timing to ensure proper application function during the migration process.

Use the heroku addons:upgrade command to migrate to a new plan.

$ heroku addons:upgrade ah-mariadb-stackhero:newplan
-----> Upgrading ah-mariadb-stackhero:newplan to sharp-mountain-4005... done
       Your plan has been updated to: ah-mariadb-stackhero:newplan

Removing the add-on

You can remove Stackhero for MariaDB via the CLI:

This will destroy all associated data and cannot be undone!

$ heroku addons:destroy ah-mariadb-stackhero
-----> Removing ah-mariadb-stackhero from sharp-mountain-4005... done

Support

Stackhero for MariaDB support and runtime issues should be submitted via one of the Heroku Support channels. We recommend adding support@stackhero.io in copy for urgent issues.

Additional resources

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