datacat application stack

This repository combines all components to execute the datacat API and editor client application. To make use of this project, Docker must be installed. Also, the docker compose executable must be available.

Docker install documentation: https://docs.docker.com/desktop/

The datacat editor application is build as part of this configuration into a static nginx container that functions as the applications' frontend proxy as well. Check the build directory ./services how this is handled. By default, the administration interface of the bundled Neo4j database is not exposed / proxied.

More information about datacat

Installation

To run the application stack, clone this repository into a writable location.

$ git clone https://github.com/dd-bim/datacat-stack.git

.env

Move into the new directory, create a copy of the given example configuration file env.example.txt as .env and edit the settings according to your needs.

To make sure your installation is reproducible in production, you should define an explicit version as available at Docker Hub.

$ cd datacat-stack
$ cp env.example.txt .env
$ nano .env

docker-compose.override.yml

Optionally, you might override the given settings in the docker-compose.yml file by copying docker-compose.override.example.yml as docker-compose.override.yml. The example given includes the development SMTP server MailSlurper. In production, you must define a relaying SMTP server, as the users will need to verify their email address on signup.

Ideally, docker-compose.yml should stay untouched to track upstream development. All environmental settings should be overriden by editing docker-compose.override.yml.

Pull current images

To pull the current container images according to your configuration run:

$ docker compose pull

Build client / proxy container

To build the client / proxy image of the application stack run:

$ docker compose build

Run stack

To start the application stack run in the project directory:

$ docker compose up -d

Access the logs by running docker compose logs.

Stop stack

To stop the application stack, run:

$ docker compose down

The current state is persisted in the linked docker volumes. Check the datacat projects' readme on how to back up and restore the database.

Update

# Pull updates of the datacat-stack project
$ git pull origin master

# Update to the datacat / editor image version you'd like to use
$ nano .env

# Pull new versions of the container images
$ docker compose pull

# Build and (re-)start the application stack 
$ docker compose up --build -d

Debugging

For debugging purposes, it might be useful to access the database directly. This is possible from the host system by executing the cypher-shell of the database container directly:

$ docker compose exec db cypher-shell