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Nile Lazarus
Nile Lazarus

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A Guide to Setting Up Pgadmin for Development on Windows(Updated)

#postgres #webdev #opensource #tutorial

In my last guide on this topic, some instructions may not have worked for everyone who attempted it.
This time around, the issues with my last guide have been resolved and thoroughly tested to see if they work for anyone and everyone wanting to configure pgadmin 4 for development on a Windows system.

Install prerequisites

First and foremost, please ensure that you have all of the following requirements fulfilled for your system.

git (https://git-scm.com/downloads)
Node.js 16 and above (https://nodejs.org/en/download)
yarn (https://classic.yarnpkg.com/lang/en/docs/install)
Python 3.7 and above (https://www.python.org/downloads/)
PostgreSQL server (https://www.postgresql.org/download)

Steps

  1. 1. Open a terminal of your choice, I will be using gitbash.
  2. Create a directory for your setup and navigate to the directory 
mkdir pgadmin
cd pgadmin
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  1. Clone the pgadmin 4 git repository 
git clone https://github.com/pgadmin-org/pgadmin4.git
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You can now begin building the runtime for your frontend

  1. Navigate to /pgadmin4/runtime directory (while in the pgadmin directory created above) 
cd pgadmin4/runtime
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  1. Run the following command and copy the contents of the dev_config.json.in file 
cat dev_config.json.in
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The contents will look something like this:

{
    "pythonPath": "C:/Python38/python.exe",
    "pgadminFile": "../web/pgAdmin4.py"
}
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Replace the string stored in pythonPath with the actual path to python.exe stored on your system.

  1. Now run this command to create a new file called dev_config.json and open it for file writing 
cat > dev_config.json
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A blank line will appear when you enter this command. Paste the contents of the file copied earlier and hit CTRL + D

  1. Run the command 
yarn install
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  1. Execute the runtime by running this command 
node_modules/nw/nwjs/nw
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We can now configure the Python environment for the backend

  1. Navigate out of the runtime directory 
cd ..
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  1. Create a virtual environment using whatever name you wish. I named my environment pgenv 
python -m virtualenv pgenv
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  1. Activate the environment 
source pgenv/Scripts/activate
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  1. Upgrade to the latest version of pip 
pip install --upgrade pip
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  1. Add the path to your PostgreSQL installation bin directory to your environment variables with this command 
export PATH="$PATH:/c/Program Files/PostgreSQL/13/bin"
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I'm using PostgreSQL v13 but you can change the path to match the version you have installed.

  1. Install dependencies 
pip install -r requirements.txt
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  1. Open up a second terminal and navigate to the web directory. Then run the following command: 
yarn run webpacker --watch
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  1. In the first terminal, navigate to the web directory again. Ensure that your virtual environment has been activated and start the server by running 
python pgAdmin.py
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You will get a message like Starting pgAdmin 4. Please navigate to http://127.0.0.1:5050 in your browser.. Navigate to http://127.0.0.1:5050 in your browser.

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