The following is a simple function that will start a connection between your lisp instance and your postgresql database. This uses the connect-top-level form, so use this version if you only want one connection or are working from the repl.
(defun start-database () "Start the database connection." (unless *db* (postmodern:connect-toplevel database-name-here your-user-name-here your-password-here "localhost" :port *database-port*)))A more normal version might be something that looks like this:
(defun start-db-connection (&optional (database *default-database*) (database-user *database-user*) (database-password *database-password*) (host "localhost")) "Start the database connection. Reconnects if there is an unconnected database in *database* which matches the database parameter in the function, it will be reconnected. Returns boolean on whether the global *database* is now connected." (unless *database* (setf *database* (postmodern:connect database database-user database-password host :pooled-p t))))As noted in the documentation, *database* is a special variable holding the current database. Most functions and macros operating on a database assume this contains a connected database.
You could use the with-connection macro and wrap your database query something like this where you have variables database-name, user-name, password and host:
(with-connection `(,database-name ,user-name ,password ,host :pooled-p t) (query (:select 'id :from 'countries :where (:= 'name "US"))))Note that this will bind special variable *database* temporarily to the new connection, but that binding will not be maintained for a subsequent call.
Not surprisingly, unconnecting to the database depends on how you connected to the database. If you used the connect-toplevel function, then you would use:
(postmodern:disconnect-toplevel)If you used the pooled connection function, then you could use:
(postmodern:clear-connection-pool)You should note that the later does clear all the connections in the pool.