Manage PostgreSQL extensions on the ObjectRocket service

Originally published February 13, 2020 at ObjectRocket.com/blog.

The PostgreSQL® (Postgres®) extensions ecosystem is extremely robust and provides a wide array of additional capabilities to Postgres.

We want to provide you with all of the tools you need to operate production databases on the ObjectRocket platform, so we’ve recently added the ability to use extensions. The extensions act as plug-ins and provide extra functionality and features.

View the available extensions

We include several extensions for our Postgres instances, and we’ve covered the most common and requested plug-ins available. To see the list of our supported plug-ins, connect to an instance running on our service and use the following queries:

• SELECT * FROM pg_available_extensions;: Shows a super list of all of the extensions in the postgres extensions directory.

• SHOW extwlist.extensions;: Shows the allowed extensions on our service.

Because Postgres packages include some extensions by default to which we provide no user access, the two lists differ slightly. If you need an extension that’s not in the whitelist or not available at all, you can work with our Support team to get it added to our platform.

Because we regularly add extensions, running the query always provides the most up-to-date list. Following is the current list of both the available and allowed extensions on the ObjectRocket service:

Loading extensions

Loading extensions on the service works the same it usually does in Postgres. You issue the CREATE EXTENSION command in the database to which you want to add the functionality.

Here’s a straightforward example. The uuid-ossp extension provides utilities to manage UUIDs. The following example graphic shows an attempt to use the uuid_generate_v1() function:

As you can see, the function fails initially because we had not yet loaded the extension. However, after loading the uuid-ossp extension and retrying the same function, we see that it now returns a UUID for us.

Again, this is a very simple example. Extensions can do much more, but you can see the basic mechanics.

Be aware that extensions are only active or usable in the databases into which you load them. In other words, every time you create a new database, you need to run CREATE EXTENSION in that database. If you’d like an extension to be available in new databases automatically, you need to either create a new database template and use that when creating new databases, or update the template1 database to include that extension. By default, all new databases are a copy template1.

Enjoy the new extensions, and let us know if you’d like us to add specific functionality.

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