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secretshardul avatar image
secretshardul asked ·

How do I connect to Astra from VSCode Workbench extension?

The Cassandra workbench extension lets us run CQL queries from within VSCode. It uses a config file of this format for connection:

[
  // AllowAllAuthenticator
  {
    "name": "Cluster AllowAllAuthenticator",
    "contactPoints": [
      "127.0.0.1"
    ]
  },
  //PasswordAuthenticator
  {
    "name": "Cluster PasswordAuthenticator",
    "contactPoints": [
      "127.0.0.1"
    ],
    "authProvider": {
      "class": "PasswordAuthenticator",
      "username": "username",
      "password": "password"
    }
  }
]

I'm able to connect it with a Cassandra server running on localhost. I want to connect it with Astra, how can this be done? I tried replacing the IP address with

https://$ASTRA_DB_ID-$ASTRA_DB_REGION.apps.astra.datastax.com

but it didn't work (environment variables replaced with actual URL).

The Astra documentation mainly talks about Stargate based connections (REST, GraphQL etc). Please help.

astra
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1 Answer

Erick Ramirez avatar image
Erick Ramirez answered ·

You will need to configure more than just the contact points to be able to connect to DataStax Astra but I don't think the Cassandra workbench supports SSL certificates.

In order to connect to Astra, you need to to download the secure-connect zipped bundle for your Astra database.

Unzip your copy of secure-connect-your_astra_db.zip which will contain the following files:

ca.crt
cert
cert.pfx
config.json
cqlshrc
identity.jks
key
trustStore.jks

The config.json file contains the following:

  • host - the contact point for the CQL driver
  • port - the CQL client port
  • keyspace - the name of the keyspace you created
  • trustStoreLocation - trustStore.jks is the truststore
  • trustStorePassword - your truststore password
  • keyStoreLocation - identity.jks is the keystore
  • keyStorePassword - your keystore password

You'll need to add the keystore/truststore and certificates to your configuration. Cheers!

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secretshardul avatar image secretshardul ·

@Erick Ramirez thanks for the detailed answer!

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Erick Ramirez avatar image Erick Ramirez ♦♦ secretshardul ·

Glad to help. Cheers!

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