Granted all privileges on my PostGres table, but still am getting a "Permission denied" error when attempting to insert/select

Question

I'm using PostGres 9.5. I'm having trouble inserting data into a table I just created. I'm getting "permission denied" errors despite granting all privileges to the database user. See below ...

localhost:myapp davea$ psql -Upostgres
Password for user postgres:
psql (9.5.0, server 9.5.1)
Type "help" for help.

postgres=# GRANT ALL ON schema public TO myapp;
GRANT

localhost:myapp davea$ psql -Upostgres
Password for user postgres:
psql (9.5.0, server 9.5.1)
Type "help" for help.

postgres=# GRANT USAGE ON schema public TO myapp;
GRANT
postgres=# \q
localhost:myapp davea$ myapp
psql (9.5.0, server 9.5.1)
Type "help" for help.

myapp=> insert into search_codes (id, code, address_id) values (1, 'atlanta', 'GA');
ERROR:  permission denied for relation search_codes
myapp=> select * FROM search_codes;
ERROR:  permission denied for relation search_codes
myapp=> \d search_codes;
                                Table "public.search_codes"
   Column   |       Type        |                         Modifiers
------------+-------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------
 id         | integer           | not null default nextval('search_codes_id_seq'::regclass)
 code       | character varying |
 address_id | character varying |
Indexes:
    "search_codes_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id)
    "index_search_codes_on_code" UNIQUE, btree (code)
    "index_search_codes_on_address_id" btree (address_id)

What's the proper way to grant privileges so that my user can insert and select from the table?

Answer 1

Your first command give you the ability to list table (you can just know that there are existing)

GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA public TO myapp

Then you have to grant SELECT, INSERT, etc... to all the tables in the schema public

GRANT SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public TO myapp

I recommand not giving all privileges to a specific app.

If you have sequences :

 GRANT SELECT, UPDATE, USAGE ON ALL SEQUENCES IN SCHEMA public to myapp

If you have functions :

GRANT EXECUTE ON ALL FUNCTIONS IN SCHEMA public TO myapp

Then your example will work.

But you still have to apply some command if you want futur created table to be able to be accessed :

ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA public GRANT SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE, TRIGGER ON TABLES TO myapp

Postgresql have a very weird mecanism it took me a while to understand it !