Question

Can I use mysql database from my personal web server instead of heroku’s database?

I configured my production database like this:

production:
    adapter: mysql2
    database: somedatabase
    username: someusername
    password: somepassword
    host: 1.1.1.1:1234

But, this doesn’t work, my app still uses heroku’s shared database.

Answer 1

This is old but in case anyone drops around looking for an answer, it’s much easier than using the gem. Just provide a DATABASE_URL and SHARED_DATABASE_URL (not sure if the second is needed). The database url format is adapter://username:password@hostname:port/database, so for example, you would do:

heroku config:add DATABASE_URL=mysql://etok:somepassword@<your-server>:3306/etok
heroku config:add SHARED_DATABASE_URL=mysql://etok:somepassword@79.101.41.213:3306/etok

Then re-deploy your app. It will read your DATABASE_URL and generate the database.yml from that. The default port is already 3306 so it’s not needed in the url in your case. When you deploy, you may notice that it generates your database.yml:

-----> Writing config/database.yml to read from DATABASE_URL

Then you’re set (as long as your server accepts connections from your heroku host.