PostgreSQL + pgAdmin — Local Dev Setup

A minimal Docker Compose setup for running PostgreSQL 16 and pgAdmin 4 locally.

Requirements

• Docker Desktop

Getting Started

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/musay/postgres-pgadmin-docker
cd postgres-pgadmin-docker

2. Configure environment

cp .env.example .env

Edit .env with your preferred credentials:

POSTGRES_USER=devuser
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=devpass
POSTGRES_DB=devdb

PGADMIN_EMAIL=admin@local.dev
PGADMIN_PASSWORD=adminpass

3. Start services

docker-compose up -d

4. Stop services

docker-compose down        # stop (data persists)
docker-compose down -v     # stop + wipe all data

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Services

Service	URL / Port	Default Credentials
PostgreSQL	localhost:5432	see .env
pgAdmin	http://localhost:5050	see .env

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Connecting pgAdmin to PostgreSQL

After opening http://localhost:5050, add a new server with:

Field	Value
Host	postgres
Port	5432
Database	devdb
Username	devuser
Password	devpass

⚠️ Use postgres as the host — not localhost. Services communicate over the internal Docker network.

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Connecting from your app

JDBC (Spring Boot)

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/devdb
spring.datasource.username=devuser
spring.datasource.password=devpass

psql CLI

docker exec -it postgres_dev psql -U devuser -d devdb

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Data Persistence

Data is stored in a named Docker volume (pgdata). It survives docker-compose down restarts.

To fully reset:

docker-compose down -v

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Project Structure

.
├── docker-compose.yml
├── .env                  # local credentials (not committed)
├── .env.example          # template — safe to commit
├── .gitignore
└── README.md

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.gitignore

Make sure your .gitignore includes:

.env
postgres-data/

Never commit .env — it contains credentials.