I’m using vim-dadbod-ui as my MySQL client.

I was trying to connect to RDS via SSH tunnel, finally figure out how to do that.

1. Create an SSH tunnel

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ssh -oStrictHostKeyChecking=no -i ~/.ssh/your-server-key.pem \
    -L 3307:your-db.cluster-ro-abcdefghijkl.ap-southeast-1.rds.amazonaws.com:3306 -N \
    ec2-user@13.12.123.123 &

This command will forward your local connection in port 3307 to the RDS in port 3306.
The & to make it run on background.

2. Add a connection to the vim-dadbod-ui client

Edit the file ~/.local/share/db_ui/connections.json

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[{
	"url": "mysql://user:pass@127.0.0.1:3306/my_local_db",
	"name": "localhost-db"
}, {
	"url": "mysql://someuser:somepass@127.0.0.1:3307/my_staging_db?ssl_mode=DISABLED",
	"name": "staging-db"
}]

The first connection is my local DB, and I use port 3306.
Since the port 3306 already in used, I map 3307 to the SSH tunnel in step 1,
in the second connection I just refer to 127.0.0.1, but with port 3307.

The command is equivalent to

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mysql -h 127.0.0.1 --port 3307 -u someuser -p --ssl-mode=DISABLED

(Some how I need the --ssl-mode=DISABLED, otherwise it throws error)

In case if you need to add more remote connection, you can use the port 3308 or any other unused port.

3. Open the client

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vim +DBUI

Start using it now

vim-dadbod-ui

References: