Creating a database using Postgres

Postgres uses the SQL language for database operations, so you'll need to use SQL commands to create and manage your database.

Installation

You can download and install it from the official PostgreSQL website.

After the installation, Postgres’s bin directory must be added to the PATH system variable.

C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\<version>\bin

To check if the Postgres was installed correctly, open a terminal or command prompt and enter:

psql --version

psql (PostgreSQL) 16.1

Start, stop and restart the Postgres server

Open a terminal or command prompt and navigate to Postgres bin directory.

cd "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\<version>\bin"

Replace <version> with your actual Postgres version.

To start the server:

pg_ctl -D "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\<version>\data" start

To restart the server:

pg_ctl -D "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\<version>\data" restart

To stop the server:

pg_ctl -D "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\<version>\data" stop

Now, you can open the psql shell to interact with the PostgreSQL database.

Interact with the psql shell

Once the Postgres server is running, now you can interact with the psql shell. Open a terminal or command prompt and enter:

psql --username postgres

Creating a database

Once you're in the psql command-line interface, you can create a new database with the following SQL command:

CREATE DATABASE webtuts_database;

Replace webtuts_database with the desired name for your database.

Using the database

After creating the database, switch to it using the following command:

\c webtuts_database;