Category: All posts
Apr 23, 2025
Posted by
Jônatas Davi Paganini
Today, we're excited to announce that we're expanding our ecosystem support to allow you to connect PostgreSQL and PHP, among other programming languages, when using TimescaleDB and building Laravel applications. While PostgreSQL has always been language-agnostic, we recognize that each developer community has unique needs, patterns, and expectations regarding database integration.
Better database integration streamlines data access, enhances performance, and improves scalability, so our mission is simple: meet developers where they are and make TimescaleDB a natural extension of their existing PostgreSQL workflow—regardless of their programming language of choice.
PHP is a versatile, easy-to-learn server-side language with built-in web development features, a vast ecosystem, strong database integration, and excellent community support, making it ideal for dynamic web applications. By integrating it with PostgreSQL and TimescaleDB, we will enable developers to build efficient, reliable, and data-driven applications with ease.
SQL is cool, but at the end of the day, developers prefer to write their favorite programming language. Tobias Petry, who is highly involved in the Laravel ecosystem, leads our PHP and PostgreSQL integration.
Let’s have a look at the simple setup for the PHP integration. Select the code in the different tabs to see other examples in Ruby and TypeScript.
return new class extends Migration
{
public function up(): void
{
Schema::createExtensionIfNotExists('timescaledb');
Schema::create('visits', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->identity();
$table->bigInteger('website_id');
$table->text('url');
$table->float('duration');
$table->timestampTz('created_at');
$table->primary(['id', 'created_at']);
$table->index(['website_id', 'created_at']);
$table->timescale(
new CreateHypertable('created_at', '1 day'),
new CreateReorderPolicyByIndex('website_id', 'created_at'),
new EnableCompression(segmentBy: 'website_id'),
new CreateCompressionPolicy('3 days'),
new CreateRetentionPolicy('1 year'),
new EnableChunkSkipping('id'),
);
});
Schema::continuousAggregate('visits_agg', function(CaggBlueprint $table) {
$table->as("
SELECT
time_bucket('1 hour', created_at) AS bucket,
website_id,
url,
SUM(duration) AS duration
FROM visits
GROUP BY bucket, website_id, url
");
$table->realtime();
$table->index(['website_id','url']);
$table->timescale(
new CreateRefreshPolicy('5 minutes', '1 days', '2 hours'),
new EnableCompression(),
new CreateCompressionPolicy('2 days'),
);
});
}
};hypertable_options = {
time_column: 'created_at', # partition data by this column
chunk_time_interval: '1 day', # create a new table for each day
compress_segmentby: 'identifier', # columnar compression key
compress_after: '7 days', # start compression after 7 days
compress_orderby: 'created_at DESC', # compression order
drop_after: '6 months' # delete data after 6 months
}
create_table(:events, id: false, hypertable: hypertable_options) do |t|
t.timestamptz :created_at, null: false
t.string :identifier, null: false
t.jsonb :payload
endimport { Entity, PrimaryColumn } from 'typeorm';
import { Hypertable, TimeColumn } from '@timescaledb/typeorm';
@Entity('page_loads')
@Hypertable({
compression: { // Optional compression
compress: true,
compress_orderby: 'time',
compress_segmentby: 'user_agent',
policy: {
schedule_interval: '7 days',
},
},
})
export class PageLoad {
@PrimaryColumn({ name: 'user_agent', type: 'varchar' })
userAgent!: string;
@TimeColumn()
time!: Date;
}If you like this, consider giving the project a GitHub star! ⭐️ You’ll also find more integration tips and information.
In addition to the PHP/PostgreSQL integration, Tobias is producing a new course, “Making Analytics FAST—Learn Timescale.” Stay tuned!
However, this is not the only integration we’ve built. We've begun this journey with Ruby, creating a deeply integrated experience that feels natural to Ruby and Rails developers, including:
Building on this foundation, we've already expanded to TypeScript. This isn't just about specific languages—it's about creating a blueprint for how TimescaleDB can integrate seamlessly with any language ecosystem, whether through our official packages or community-led initiatives.
While TimescaleDB works with any language that connects to PostgreSQL, we believe in going beyond basic compatibility. Language-specific integrations deliver a number of benefits:
Our goal isn't just to be compatible with your stack—it's to become an essential, natural extension of it.
Want to create your own integration? Read the integration guide.
Here's where you come in. We're actively seeking developers who want to build and maintain TimescaleDB integrations for their language communities. Whether you're passionate about Python, Go, Rust, PHP, JavaScript, Java, .NET, or any other ecosystem, we want to support your efforts.
Here's what we're offering to community integration maintainers:
If you’re interested, book a Technical Office Hours call with me (Jônatas, developer advocate at Timescale), and let’s start!
We're approaching this ecosystem expansion methodically. Throughout this process, you can expect to see us document our approach, share best practices, and create reusable patterns that make TimescaleDB integration consistent across languages while remaining idiomatic to each.
We're committed to building a strong community around TimescaleDB and fostering broader ecosystem development. Here's how we plan to engage and support developers throughout our expansion:
Through these initiatives, we aim to create an inclusive community where developers can learn, collaborate, and build amazing applications with TimescaleDB.
At Timescale, we believe real-time analytics is part of any data-driven business, which translates into time-series data everywhere. Developers in every language community deserve first-class tools to work with this demanding workload. By expanding our ecosystem support and embracing community-led integrations, we're creating a more inclusive and powerful platform for all developers.
Join us in this mission! Here’s how you can get involved:
Are you building an integration for TimescaleDB in your preferred language? We'd love to hear about it! Share your project or reach out to our Ecosystem team directly.