DockerMiniProject - Personal Finance with Firefly III

Overview of Project

Goals: Deploy Firefly III and an Nginx Proxy via Docker

Description: For this project you will need to follow the Firely III documentation on how to install their container. Once you have the yaml file for firefly, you will set up a nginx proxy in front of the firefly interface to forward it to port 80 when browsing on your localhost.

Pre-Requisites:

• Docker is Installed
  • follow step 1 here
  • run docker run hello world to make sure docker and docker compose is running

File structure

DockerProject

• docker-compose.yml

• .env

• .db.env

• .importer.env

• nginx

  • DockerFile
  • nginx.conf

  

Helpful Tips and Commands

• Copy and paste the YML files directly from the yml Firefly website (yml configurations are super picky!)
• make sure you are in the correct directory when running docker-compose up -d
• If a Docker command dosen't work try running it with sudo
• use docker-compose down to shut down your containers BEFORE making changes to the docker-compose.yml file
• use docker ps to view what containers are running
• use docker ps --all to view containers that failed
• use docker stop container_name to stop a specific container
• use docker compose build --no-cache to rebuild containers from scratch
• Use exec to execute commands within your container and not your localhost
• When configuring the Firely files, make sure every file except docker-compose.yml has a preceeding period.

Set up Firefly III Container

Make a project directory

• mkdir DockerProject

  This is where you will place all of your project files and where docker will pull from to start your container

Create Firefly YAML files

Use your favorite text editor and create the files below in the DockerProject directory. Copy/paste the yml files from the Firely website or the project files in this project.

• docker.compose.yml
• .importer.env
• .db.env
• .env

If you save all example files and change nothing, it will NOT YET work. You must do a few things:

• Change DB_PASSWORD in .env to something else
• Change MYSQL_PASSWORD in .db.env to the SAME value
• Change FIREFLY_III_URL in .importer.env to http://app:8080
• Change VANITY_URL in .importer.env to http://localhost

Set up Nginx proxy

Within the DockerProject directory, make a new directory called nginx. You will need to put some config files that the main docker-compose.yml file will pull from to set up the nginx container

• mkdir nginx

Within your nginx directory make two files (you can use this link or my project files):

• Dockerfile
• nginx.conf

Make sure that proxy_pass in nginx.conf is set to http://app:8080;

Edit your docker-compose.yml to add the nginx service

My docker-compose.yml project file already has this part in it, so if you copied mine when you created the firely files, then you don't need to do this step. If not, update the docker-compose.yml file with the syntax below.

#this goes under the importer section of the file
nginx:
    build: ./nginx
    ports:
      - '80:80'
    links:
      - app
    networks:
      - firefly_iii

Start your Containers!

• run sudo docker-compose up -d
• run sudo docker ps to check that your containers are all running

If all your files match what I have, and you have changed the configurations to reflect your system, then you should be able to browse to Firely on your browser via http://localhost.

You also shouldn't have to specifiy a port when browsing since nginx will change your request to the default port of 80!

View Troubleshooting Steps here