PostGIS with H3 Extension Railway Template

This template provides a PostgreSQL database with PostGIS and Uber's H3 extension pre-installed, ready to deploy on Railway.

Features

• PostgreSQL 17
• PostGIS 3.4
• Uber's H3 postgres extension bindings for hexagonal hierarchical geospatial indexing https://github.com/postgis/h3-pg
• Pre-configured extensions and dependencies

Prerequisites

• A Railway account
• Railway CLI (optional, for local development)

Environment Variables

Docker Compose reads POSTGRES_PORT, POSTGRES_DB, POSTGRES_USER, and POSTGRES_PASSWORD from a .env file. These are the same variables used for deployment; you can change the values in .env before first run.

Local Development

Clone this repository:

git clone <your-repo-url>
cd postgres-h3

Running using docker

Create a .env file so Docker Compose and the database init scripts have valid values (without it, variables are empty and initialization will fail):

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env if you want different database name, user, or password. Then start the database:

docker-compose up -d

Connect to the database (use the same POSTGRES_DB and POSTGRES_PASSWORD as in your .env):

psql -h localhost -p 54040 -U postgres -d postgresh3db -W

Enter the password when prompted (e.g. postgres if that’s your POSTGRES_PASSWORD).

"password authentication failed for user postgres"

• Use the right port and password: With docker-compose the app is on port 54040 (mapped from 5432). Connect with the same password as in .env (POSTGRES_PASSWORD).

• Stale volume: The password is set only when the data directory is first created. If you previously ran the container without POSTGRES_PASSWORD or with a different one, the existing volume still has the old password. Reset and re-init:

  docker-compose down -v
  docker-compose up -d

  (-v removes the postgres_data volume so the next startup re-initializes with your current .env.)

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Developed and maintained by Chike Ozulumba. For issues or suggestions, please open an issue on the GitHub repository.