Connections

Connection strings and pooling

Get PostgreSQL connection strings for your database projects. Supports direct connections, connection pooling, and branch-specific connections.

Get connection string

cURL

curl https://api.case.dev/database/v1/projects/proj_abc123/connection \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CASEDEV_API_KEY"

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
branch	string	No	Branch name (defaults to main)
pooled	boolean	No	Use pooled connection via PgBouncer

Response

Field	Type	Description
connectionUri	string	PostgreSQL connection string (includes credentials)
branch	string	Branch name for this connection
pooled	boolean	Whether this is a pooled connection

Direct vs pooled connections

Direct connections

Best for:

• Long-running processes
• Migration scripts
• Administrative tasks
• Applications with few connections

cURL

curl "https://api.case.dev/database/v1/projects/$PROJECT_ID/connection" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CASEDEV_API_KEY"

Pooled connections (PgBouncer)

Best for:

• Serverless functions
• High-concurrency applications
• Short-lived connections

cURL

curl "https://api.case.dev/database/v1/projects/$PROJECT_ID/connection?pooled=true" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CASEDEV_API_KEY"

Pooled connections go through PgBouncer, which maintains a pool of database connections. This is essential for serverless environments where you might have many short-lived function invocations.

Branch-specific connections

Get a connection string for a specific branch:

cURL

# Get staging branch connection
curl "https://api.case.dev/database/v1/projects/$PROJECT_ID/connection?branch=staging" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CASEDEV_API_KEY"

# Get feature branch connection (pooled)
curl "https://api.case.dev/database/v1/projects/$PROJECT_ID/connection?branch=feature-auth&pooled=true" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CASEDEV_API_KEY"

Integration examples

Drizzle ORM

Typescript

import { drizzle } from 'drizzle-orm/postgres-js';
import postgres from 'postgres';

const conn = await client.database.v1.projects.getConnection(projectId);
const sql = postgres(conn.connectionUri);
const db = drizzle(sql);

// Query
const users = await db.select().from(usersTable);

Prisma

Typescript

// Get connection string
const conn = await client.database.v1.projects.getConnection(projectId, {
  pooled: true  // Recommended for Prisma
});

// Set in .env or environment
process.env.DATABASE_URL = conn.connectionUri;

// prisma/schema.prisma
// datasource db {
//   provider = "postgresql"
//   url      = env("DATABASE_URL")
// }

Raw pg (node-postgres)

Typescript

import { Pool } from 'pg';

const conn = await client.database.v1.projects.getConnection(projectId, {
  pooled: true
});

const pool = new Pool({
  connectionString: conn.connectionUri
});

const result = await pool.query('SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = $1', [userId]);

Python psycopg2

Python

import psycopg2

conn = client.database.v1.projects.get_connection(project_id)

db = psycopg2.connect(conn.connection_uri)
cursor = db.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = %s", (user_id,))

Python SQLAlchemy

Python

from sqlalchemy import create_engine

conn = client.database.v1.projects.get_connection(project_id, pooled=True)

engine = create_engine(conn.connection_uri)
with engine.connect() as connection:
    result = connection.execute("SELECT * FROM users")

Security

Connection strings include database credentials. Never expose them in client-side code, logs, or version control.

Best practices:

• Store connection strings in environment variables
• Use secret management services (AWS Secrets Manager, Vault)
• Rotate credentials periodically
• Use pooled connections for serverless to limit open connections

Typescript

// Good: Environment variable
const databaseUrl = process.env.DATABASE_URL;

// Bad: Hardcoded
const databaseUrl = "postgresql://user:password@host/db"; // Never do this

Connection string format

postgresql://[user]:[password]@[host]/[database]?sslmode=require

Component	Description
user	Database username
password	Database password
host	Neon endpoint hostname
database	Database name (default: neondb)
sslmode	SSL mode (always require)

Example:

postgresql://neondb_owner:[e-mail]/neondb?sslmode=require