rajasvu / quickstart

Get up and running with Plaid Link and the API in minutes

Plaid quickstart

This repository accompanies Plaid's quickstart guide.

Here you'll find full example integration apps using our client libraries:

Table of contents

• 1. Clone the repository
  • Special instructions for Windows
• 2. Set up your environment variables
• 3. Run the quickstart
  • Run with Docker
    • Pre-requisites
    • Running
      • Start the container
      • View the logs
      • Stop the container
  • Run without Docker
    • Pre-requisites
    • 1. Running the backend
      • Node
      • Python
      • Ruby
      • Go
      • Java
    • 2. Running the frontend
• Testing OAuth

1. Clone the repository

Using https:

git clone https://github.com/plaid/quickstart
cd quickstart

Alternatively, if you use ssh:

git clone [e-mail]:plaid/quickstart.git
cd quickstart

Special instructions for Windows

Note - because this repository makes use of symbolic links, to run this on a Windows machine, make sure you have checked the "enable symbolic links" box when you download Git to your local machine. Then you can run the above commands to clone the quickstart. Otherwise, you may open your Git Bash terminal as an administrator and use the following command when cloning the project

git clone -c core.symlinks=true https://github.com/plaid/quickstart

2. Set up your environment variables

cp .env.example .env

Copy .env.example to a new file called .env and fill out the environment variables inside. At minimum PLAID_CLIENT_ID and PLAID_SECRET must be filled out. Get your Client ID and secrets from the dashboard: https://dashboard.plaid.com/account/keys

NOTE: .env files are a convenient local development tool. Never run a production application using an environment file with secrets in it.

3. Run the Quickstart

There are two ways to run the various language quickstarts in this repository. You can simply choose to use Docker, or you can run the code directly. If you would like to run the code directly, skip to the Run without Docker section.

Run with Docker

Pre-requisites

• make available at your command line
• Docker installed and running on your machine: https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/
• Your environment variables populated in .env
• If using Windows, a working Linux installation on Windows 10. If you are using Windows and do not already have WSL or Cygwin configured, we recommend running without Docker.

Running

There are three basic make commands available

• up: builds and starts the container
• logs: tails logs
• stop: stops the container

Each of these should be used with a language argument, which is one of node, python, ruby, java, or go. If unspecified, the default is node.

Start the container

make up language=node

The quickstart backend is now running on http://localhost:8000 and frontend on http://localhost:3000.

If you make changes to one of the server files such as index.js, server.go, etc, or to the .env file, simply run make up language=node again to rebuild and restart the container.

If you experience a Docker connection error when running the command above, try the following:

• Make sure Docker is running
• Try running the command prefixed with sudo

View the logs

make logs language=node

Stop the container

make stop language=node

Run without Docker

Pre-requisites

• The language you intend to use is installed on your machine and available at your command line. This repo should generally work with active LTS versions of each language such as node >= 14, python >= 3.8, ruby >= 2.6, etc.
• Your environment variables populated in .env
• npm
• If using Windows, a command line utility capable of running basic Unix shell commands

1. Running the backend

Once started with one of the commands below, the quickstart will be running on http://localhost:8000 for the backend. Enter the additional commands in step 2 to run the frontend which will run on http://localhost:3000.

Node

$ cd ./node
$ npm ci
$ ./start.sh

Python

⚠️ As python2 has reached its end of life, only python3 is supported.

cd ./python

# If you use virtualenv
# virtualenv venv
# source venv/bin/activate

pip install -r requirements.txt
./start.sh

If you get this error message:

ssl.SSLError: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:749)

You may need to run the following command in your terminal for your particular version of python in order to install SSL certificates:

# examples:
open /Applications/Python\ 3.9/Install\ Certificates.command
# or
open /Applications/Python\ 3.6/Install\ Certificates.command

Ruby

cd ./ruby
bundle
./start.sh

Go

cd ./go
go build
./start.sh

Java

cd ./java
mvn clean package
./start.sh

2. Running the frontend

$ cd ./frontend
$ npm ci
$ npm start

Testing OAuth

Some institutions (primarily in Europe, but a small number in the US) require an OAuth redirect authentication flow, where the end user is redirected to the bank’s website or mobile app to authenticate. For this flow, you should set PLAID_REDIRECT_URI=http://localhost:3000/ in .env. You will also need to register this localhost redirect URI in the Plaid dashboard under Team Settings > API > Allowed redirect URIs.

OAuth flows are only testable in the sandbox environment in this Quickstart app due to an https redirect_uri being required in other environments. Additionally, if you want to use the Payment Initiation product, you will need to contact Sales to get this product enabled.