This version is used with pgx v4. In pgx v5 it is part of the https://github.com/jackc/pgx repository. This v4 version will reach end-of-life on July 1, 2025. Only security bug fixes will be made to this version.

Package pgconn is a low-level PostgreSQL database driver. It operates at nearly the same level as the C library libpq. It is primarily intended to serve as the foundation for higher level libraries such as https://github.com/jackc/pgx. Applications should handle normal queries with a higher level library and only use pgconn directly when required for low-level access to PostgreSQL functionality.

pgConn, err := pgconn.Connect(context.Background(), os.Getenv("DATABASE_URL"))
if err != nil {
	log.Fatalln("pgconn failed to connect:", err)
}
defer pgConn.Close(context.Background())
result := pgConn.ExecParams(context.Background(), "SELECT email FROM users WHERE id=$1", [][]byte{[]byte("123")}, nil, nil, nil)
for result.NextRow() {
	fmt.Println("User 123 has email:", string(result.Values()[0]))
}
_, err = result.Close()
if err != nil {
	log.Fatalln("failed reading result:", err)
}

The pgconn tests require a PostgreSQL database. It will connect to the database specified in the PGX_TEST_CONN_STRING environment variable. The PGX_TEST_CONN_STRING environment variable can be a URL or DSN. In addition, the standard PG* environment variables will be respected. Consider using direnv to simplify environment variable handling.

Connect to your PostgreSQL server and run:

create database pgx_test;

Now you can run the tests:

PGX_TEST_CONN_STRING="host=/var/run/postgresql dbname=pgx_test" go test ./...

Pgconn supports multiple connection types and means of authentication. These tests are optional. They will only run if the appropriate environment variable is set. Run go test -v | grep SKIP to see if any tests are being skipped. Most developers will not need to enable these tests. See ci/setup_test.bash for an example set up if you need change authentication code.