README.md

Localhost Databases

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Apache Cassandra is an open source NoSQL distributed database.

About • Disclaimer • Getting Started • Download • How To Use

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About

Apache Cassandra is an open source NoSQL distributed database that manages large amounts of data across commodity servers. It is a decentralized, scalable storage system designed to handle vast volumes of data across multiple commodity servers, providing high availability without a single point of failure.

You can learn about Cassandra in 100 Seconds by watching Fireship YouTube channel.

Disclaimer

Important

Localhost Databases is not affiliated with the databases' developers/owners and is not an official product.

Localhost Databases has been developed to run databases in a local Docker environment. To install a production instance, read the databases' respective installation guides.

Getting Started

You will need to make sure your system meets the following prerequisites:

• Docker Engine >= 20.10.0

This repository utilizes Docker to run the Cassandra sample. So, before using the Cassandra, make sure you have Docker installed on your system.

Download

To use Cassandra, you can clone the latest version of Localhost Databases repository for macOS, Linux and Windows.

# Clone this repository.
$ git clone git@github.com:luisaveiro/localhost-databases.git --branch main --single-branch

You can locate the Cassandra Docker configuration in the databases directory.

# Navigate to the Cassandra folder.
$ cd localhost-databases/databases/cassandra

How To Use

There are a few steps you need to follow before you can have an Cassandra database set up and running in Docker container. I have outline the steps you would need to take to get started.

1. Environment Variables

Before you start a database in a Docker container, you will need to create a DotEnv file. The DotEnv file will allow you to configure your database's credentials and map a container's port.

Localhost Databases includes a .env.example file for Cassandra Database. You can run the following command in the terminal to create your DotEnv file.

# Navigate to a database.
$ cd databases/cassandra

# Create .env from .env.example.
$ cp .env.example .env

The Cassandra Docker Compose file uses the follow variables from the DotEnv file.

#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Docker env
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------

# The project name. | default: cassandra
APP_NAME="cassandra"

#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Database (Cassandra) env
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------

# The Cassandra database container name. | default: cassandra_db
DB_CONTAINER_NAME="${APP_NAME}_db"

#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Network env
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Map the database container exposed port to the host port. | default: 9042
DB_PORT=9042

# The Docker network for the containers. | default: local_dbs_network
NETWORK_NAME="local_dbs_network"

#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Volume env
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------

# The database container data volume. | default: cassandra_db_data
DB_VOLUME_DATA_NAME="${DB_CONTAINER_NAME}_data"

Note

You are unable to create additional users via the Cassandra Docker image environment variables.

2. Start Docker container

To start the Cassandra Local container, you can run the following command:

# Navigate to Cassandra database.
$ cd databases/cassandra

# Run Docker Compose command.
$ docker compose up -d

Expected result

To check the Cassandra container is running and the port mapping is configured correctly, you can run the following command:

# List containers
$ docker ps  

You should see a similar output.

CONTAINER ID   IMAGE              COMMAND                  CREATED              STATUS              PORTS                                                       NAMES
4f5ffb447035   cassandra:latest   "docker-entrypoint.s…"   About a minute ago   Up About a minute   7000-7001/tcp, 7199/tcp, 9160/tcp, 0.0.0.0:9042->9042/tcp   cassandra_db

3. Stop Docker container

To stop the Cassandra Local container, you can run the following command:

$ docker compose down

4. Connect to Database

To connect to your Cassandra container from your database client, you will need to provide the following settings:

HOST=127.0.0.1
PORT="${DB_PORT}"

USER="cassandra"
PASSWORD="cassandra"

Tip

The cassandra user is the system administrator account on the Cassandra Server instance that's created during setup.

Expected result

Below is a screenshot of the settings used in TablePlus:

_{^{TablePlus settings for Cassandra.}}

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