channels_postgres

A Django Channels channel layer that uses PostgreSQL as its backing store

Installation

pip install channels_postgres

Update INSTALLED_APPS

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'channels',
    'channels_postgres',
    ...
)

Run migrations for internal tables

python manage.py migrate channels_postgres

Update DATABASES dictionary

Add the 'channels_postgres' entry to the DATABASES dictionary in your Django settings file like so:

DATABASES = {
	'default': {
		...
	},
	'channels_postgres': {
		'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
		'NAME': 'postgres',
		'USER': 'postgres',
		'PASSWORD': 'password',
		'HOST': '127.0.0.1',
		'PORT': '5432',
	}
}

Usage

Set up the channel layer in your Django settings file like so:

CHANNEL_LAYERS = {
    'default': {
        'BACKEND': 'channels_postgres.core.PostgresChannelLayer',
        'CONFIG': {
            'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
            'NAME': 'postgres',
            'USER': 'postgres',
            'PASSWORD': 'password',
            'HOST': '127.0.0.1',
            'PORT': '5432',
            ...,
            # Optional configuration for psycopg_pool
            'PSYCOPG_OPTIONS': {
                'min_size': 10,
                'max_size': 10,
            },
        },
    },
}

The Config object is exactly the same as the standard config object for Django's PostgreSQL database. See the django documentation for more information.

The django-channels config parameters are described below:

prefix

Prefix to add to all database group keys. Defaults to asgi:. In most cases, you don't need to change this setting because it's only used internally.

expiry

Message expiry in seconds. Defaults to 60. You generally shouldn't need to change this, but you may want to turn it down if you have peaky traffic you wish to drop, or up if you have peaky traffic you want to backlog until you get to it. group_expiry

Group expiry

Defaults to 0.

0 means disabled!

Channels will be removed from the group after this amount of time; it's recommended you reduce it for a healthier system that encourages disconnections. This value should not be lower than the relevant timeouts in the interface server (e.g. the --websocket_timeout to daphne). capacity

symmetric_encryption_keys

Pass this to enable the optional symmetric encryption mode of the backend. To use it, make sure you have the cryptography package installed, or specify the cryptography extra when you install channels_postgres:

pip install channels_postgres[cryptography]

symmetric_encryption_keys should be a list of strings, with each string being an encryption key. The first key is always used for encryption; all are considered for decryption, so you can rotate keys without downtime - just add a new key at the start and move the old one down, then remove the old one after the message expiry time has passed.

Data is encrypted both on the wire and at rest in Postgres, though we advise you also route your Postgres connections over TLS for higher security.

Keys should have at least 32 bytes of entropy - they are passed through the SHA256 hash function before being used as an encryption key. Any string will work, but the shorter the string, the easier the encryption is to break.

If you're using Django, you may also wish to set this to your site's SECRET_KEY setting via the CHANNEL_LAYERS setting:

CHANNEL_LAYERS = {
    'default': {
        'BACKEND': 'channels_postgres.core.PostgresChannelLayer',
        'CONFIG': {
            ...,
            'symmetric_encryption_keys': [SECRET_KEY],
        },
    },
}

Pyscopg pool

The channels_postgres makes use of a connection pool (via psycopg_pool) to efficiently manage concurrent connections to the database. You can pass additional options to the underlying psycopg_pool connection pool by setting the PSYCOPG_OPTIONS setting.

See the psycopg_pool documentation for more information.

This might come in handy if you have lots of consumers in your channels application with increased latency between sending a message and the consumer(s) processing it. Increasing the min_size of the connection pool might help.

Deviations from the channels spec

group_expiry

Defaults to 0 (which means disabled). This option is tied too closely to daphne (The official ASGI interface server for django-channels). It makes no sense if you're using an alternate ASGI server (like Uvicorn) which doesn't disconnect WebSockets automatically.

Setting it to a non zero value enables the expected behaviour.

channel_capacity

RDBMS' like PostgreSQL were specifically built to handle considerable amounts of data. Hence, there's no channel capacity. Although, it should be noted that the channels_postgres channel layer uses an internal asyncio.Queue to store messages and deliver them to consumers as quickly as possible. It is quite possible to see increased memory usage on the server if you send a lot of messages without consumers to process them.

Your database should be able to handle thousands of messages with ease. If you're still worried about the database table growing out of hand, you can reduce the expiry time of the individual messages so they will be purged if a consumer cannot process them on time.

Dependencies

Python >= 3.9 is required for channels_postgres