Rick Otten (@rotten) recently released a foreign data wrapper for PostgreSQL that provides a bridge to RethinkDB. The wrapper makes it possible to expose individual tables from a RethinkDB database in PostgreSQL, enabling users to access their RethinkDB data with with SQL queries.

The wrapper could prove especially useful in cases where a developer wants to incorporate RethinkDB into an existing application built on PostgreSQL, taking advantage of RethinkDB features like changefeeds to easily add realtime updates. You could, for example, use RethinkDB to store and propagate realtime events while continuing to use PostgreSQL for things like account management and other data persistence.

To try the foreign data wrapper myself, I used it to access cat pictures from my CatThink demo in PostgreSQL. I built CatThink last year to illustrate how RethinkDB changefeeds can simplify the architecture of realtime applications. CatThink, which is built with Node.js and Socket.io, uses Instagram’s realtime APIs and a RethinkDB changefeed to display a stream of the latest cat pictures posted to the popular photo sharing service.

As I will show you in this article, I used the foreign data wrapper to connect a PostgreSQL instance to a RethinkDB database so that I could retrieve cat picture URLs with simple SQL queries.

Configure the foreign data wrapper

Rick’s RethinkDB wrapper is built with Multicorn, a PostgreSQL extension that lets developers implement foreign data wrappers in Python. Using Multicorn made it possible to build the wrapper around the official RethinkDB Python driver. The wrapper is currently a read-only implementation—you can perform queries that retrieve data from the RethinkDB tables, but you can’t manipulate the wrapped tables with operations like INSERT or UPDATE .

I performed my experiment on a Linux system running Ubuntu 14.10, RethinkDB 1.15, and PostgreSQL 9.4. I installed the following packages with APT:

apt-get install python-setuptools python-dev postgresql-server-dev-9.4 pgxnclient postgresql rethinkdb git python-pip

To install Multicorn and the RethinkDB foreign data wrapper, I followed the instructions from the project’s documentation.

Retrieve RethinkDB data with SQL queries

I used the following command to initialize the foreign data wrapper, specifying the name of the desired database and the host and port of the RethinkDB server:

CREATE SERVER rethink FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER multicorn OPTIONS (wrapper 'rethinkdb_fdw.rethinkdb_fdw.RethinkDBFDW', host 'localhost', port '28015', database 'cats');

I used the following SQL expression to expose the instacat table, which contains image posting data from Instagram:

CREATE FOREIGN TABLE instacat (id varchar, "user" json, caption json, images json, time timestamp) server rethink options (table_name 'instacat');

In the command, I defined columns that correspond with top-level properties from the documents in the instacat RethinkDB table. I can use those columns when performing a query against the foreign table. Each column in the table is defined with an associated type. I use the json type for properties that contain objects with other nested values. Note that I string-escaped the user column so that it won’t be mistaken for a keyword. I only created columns for a subset of the properties available in each record. You can create columns for as many records as you want.

To see the foreign table in action, I performed a simple select query in the SQL console:

SELECT * FROM instacat;

The operation worked as expected, displaying the values from the RethinkDB table. It’s also possible to extract individual sub-properties from the JSON objects. PostgreSQL 9.3 introduced a number of specialized SQL operators for working with JSON data. The following query shows how to extract a few individual values out of nested JSON structures in each record from the table:

select "user"->'full_name', caption->'text', images#>'{low_resolution,url}' from instacat;

The -> operator allows you to extract the value of a given field as text. The #> operator lets you specify multiple keys so that you can retrieve a value from an arbitrary depth within a nested JSON structure. The expression images#>'{low_resolution, url}' in PostgreSQL is equivalent to something like r.row("images")("low_resolution")("url") in ReQL. Thanks to the magic of foreign data wrappers, I can now access kitties in my PostgreSQL applications.

Although you can’t modify the data, many SQL operations will work as expected. You can even use joins, performing queries that operate across foreign tables and conventional PostgreSQL tables.

Final notes

Given that every query against a foreign table entails a query against the RethinkDB instance through the Python driver, there’s a fair amount of overhead involved. The wrapper’s documentation recommends using a materialized view in performance-sensitive usage scenarios.

The documentation also suggests setting log_min_messages to debug1 in your postgresql.conf file ( /etc/postgresql/9.4/main/postgresql.conf on Ubuntu) during troubleshooting. That will expose errors from the foreign data wrapper in your logs, which make it a bit easier to see what’s going on.

Rick’s foreign data wrapper makes it easy to incorporate RethinkDB into existing applications built on PostgreSQL. It’s also a pretty compelling example of how Multicorn simplifies interoperability between PostgreSQL and external data sources.

Want to try it yourself? Install RethinkDB and check out the thirty-second quick start guide.

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