Casanet remote server.

For what?

The casanet server is running on the local network.

so to get access to the local casanet API outside the home we need to know our home public IP address and configure port forwarding in-home router.

But it not so easy, because some of ISP services giving NAT IP and not public IP, and some other replacing IP addresses each connection, also for port forwarding, the computer needs to use a static IP address in a local network.

The solution:

The remote server is built to run on a cloud so the local casa-net server will connect to it via ws, and each user request will redirect to the local server.

The WS connection used only to redirect requests, and in the local server, it will be converted back to an HTTP request and authentication and handled like each other HTTP request.

One remote server can manage and redirect API calls to many local servers, the redirection to the correct local server is based on valid users list of each local server, all email accounts in that list verified by the remote server with registration code, before adding them to the collection or added manually by the remote server administrator.

If the user email exists in more then one local server valid users you will need in login request to select a local server to try redirect to.

Note that remote server not keeping or snooping any data, all requests send after session checking AS IS to the local server. (except user session key hash).

Simple diagram:

Remote server installation:

1. Download the project via git or download files as a zip.
2. Install Node.js on the machine.
3. Navigate in a command line to $/remote-server and press yarn install --frozen-lockfile.
4. Build the source code by npm run build.
5. Press npm run start to run the server.

Configuration

The configuration is based on the environment variables.

All variables with example value placed in .env.example file.

You can load the environment using .env file.

Secret keys

Define a variable named JWT_SECRET with a secret string to sign sessions. You can define ADMIN_JWT_EXPIRES_IN in the ms format (the default is '2 days').

App behind a proxy

When deploying an app to some services (Heroku, AWS, etc) the app runs behind a proxy. To tell the app to trust the proxy set APP_BEHIND_PROXY env var to true. And to redirect HTTP request to HTTPS set APP_BEHIND_PROXY_REDIRECT_HTTPS env var to true.

Allow cors for the frontend apps

To allow the casanet and remote management web interfaces to access the remote server API set ALLOW_MANAGEMENT_ORIGINS with the origin URL's (separated by ,) of the web app (default is 'http://127.0.0.1:8080' and 'http://127.0.0.1:8081').

In addition, if the frontend app running on a different domain then the server, set SAME_SITE_POLICY to be false, otherways the browser restricts to send the session to the server. see cookies SameSite.

Note the risk of allowing session cookie to send for other domains. This is why the default value for SAME_SITE_POLICY is true.

Send mail account

To send emails, (for MFA and status notifications) the server needs to use mail account access.

See in the casanet server Two-factor authentication section, how to configure it.

Configure database

Install locally:

Define local variable named DATABASE_URL of the form postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/casanet_db

1. Create Database and User:

   $ psql postgres
   CREATE ROLE casanet WITH LOGIN PASSWORD 'yourpass';
   ALTER ROLE casanet CREATEDB;
   
   $ psql postgres -U casanet
   CREATE DATABASE casanet_db;
   GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE casanet_db TO casanet;

2. Run migrations to create tables:

   npm run migrate
   
   # to revert the last migration
   npm run migrate:revert

Pair local server with the remote server

1. In local dashboard login as admin and get machine mac address (In the sidebar, get local MAC address).
2. In remote dashboard login and create a new local server.
3. In remote dashboard generate a key for the local server.
4. In local dashboard set remote server settings with remote server URI (ws://remote-server-domain or wss://remote-server-domain case using HTTPS) and the generated key.
5. In remote dashboard add any needed email accounts to the valid user's array or in the local server route to users and start the "register user to remote server" process.
6. That's it, now you can access local dashboard API via the remote server.

Remote server API

The remote dashboard wrapping the administration API.

The full specs of API are served on running service using SwaggerUI on http://<ip/domain>/docs.