unaccentextension on managed databases
21 days ago
I would like to request support for the unaccent extension on Railway's managed PostgreSQL instances.
What is unaccent?
unaccent is a text search dictionary shipped as part of the official PostgreSQL contrib package postgresql-contrib). It removes diacritical marks from strings, enabling accent-insensitive searches (e.g. matching "tetra" against "Tétra").
Why is it needed?
Without unaccent, it is not possible to implement reliable accent-insensitive full-text search purely in SQL on Railway PostgreSQL. The workaround — normalizing data in application code and storing redundant search columns — adds significant complexity and maintenance burden to the data model.
unaccent is a standard, widely-used, read-only extension with no security implications. It is already supported by other managed PostgreSQL providers such as Supabase, Render, and AWS RDS.
Expected behavior:
The following should execute without error on a Railway PostgreSQL instance:
```sql
CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS unaccent;
SELECT unaccent('Héllo Wörld'); -- returns 'Hello World'
```
Request:
Please include unaccent in the list of supported extensions and ensure the pg_catalog.unaccent dictionary is available, either by enabling it by default or by allowing users to activate it via CREATE EXTENSION.
Regards.
2 Replies
21 days ago
Our PostgreSQL service includes an Extensions tab in the database view where you can see which extensions are available in the image and install them directly. Since unaccent is part of the standard postgresql-contrib package included in the official Postgres image our template is based on, it should be listed there and installable via the UI or by running CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS unaccent;.
Status changed to Awaiting User Response Railway • 21 days ago
21 days ago
Yes it’s ok.
In fact, I had some troubles to use unaccent func in my query in repository.
Thanks you
Status changed to Awaiting Railway Response Railway • 21 days ago
Status changed to Solved jdeguehegny • 21 days ago