pg client fails to connect (silently) using Node 14

The pg client seems to fail quietly when connecting to postgress when using Node 14.x. Tested using Docker.

Dockerfile

FROM node:14.0.0-alpine3.10 as builder
RUN apk add postgresql-client
WORKDIR /src
COPY . .
ENTRYPOINT [ "/bin/sh" ]

package.json

{
  "devDependencies": {
    "pg": "^8.3.2",
    "ts-node": "^8.10.2",
    "typescript": "^3.7.5"
  }
}

test-pg-client.ts

const { Client } = require('pg');

start();

async function start() {
    const conString = "postgres://postgres:(password)@localhost:5432/postgres";

    const client = new Client(conString);
    await client.connect();

    const query = await client.query('select 1');

    query.rows.forEach(value => console.info(`row value`, value));

    await client.end();
}

Since we’re using Docker, let’s build and run the image

docker build -t my-image .
docker run -it --network=host my-image

(this runs the image with host network access, allowing you to connect to a postgres database that is running on the same machine. )

Expected Result (while inside the container):

❯ yarn install
❯ ts-node test-pg-client.ts
row value { '?column?': 1 }

Actual Result:

❯ ts-node test-pg-client.ts

(no errors, no messages, just nothing)

The behavior is remedied by changing the first line in Dockerfile to the following:

FROM node:12.18.3-alpine3.12 as builder

This behavior seems similar to https://github.com/brianc/node-postgres/issues/2180 but wasn’t totally sure if the circumstances were the same, so chose to make a new issue just in case.

[krishchow]

+1 I noticed this too, reverting to nodev12.18.3 fixed the issue for me as well

[brianc]

I had this same issue with pg version 7 and Node 14. It may be worth noting in the README that pg v8 or upwards is required for Node 14.

agreed - I can do this