turtl / server

The new Turtl server

Turtl server

Opening an issue? See the Turtl project tracker

This is the new Turtl server. It handles a number of things for Turtl clients:

• Account management (join/login/delete)
• Data storage
• Syncing
• Permissions and sharing

It implements a plugin architecture so things like analytics and payment processing can be used without forcing a particular method/service.

Running the server

The Turtl server requires Node >= 8 and a Postgres instance (>= 9.6) with a dedicated user/db set up for it.

Once you have Node and Postgres set up, do the following:

mkdir turtl
cd turtl
git clone https://github.com/turtl/server
cd server/
npm install
cp config/config.yaml.default config/config.yaml

Now edit config/config.yaml as needed. You'll want to main get your db settings correct, and uploads/s3 sections configured. Also, be sure to change app.secure_hash_salt (unless you're going to be running the integration tests against this server).

Now do:

# create the plugin directory from config.yaml#plugins.plugin_location
mkdir /path/to/plugin/dir    # (usually just plugins/ in turtl/server/)
./scripts/init-db.sh
node server.js

Great, done.

Running the server (via docker-compose)

You only have to run the following docker-compose command:

docker-compose up

It will spawn a postgres database and the turtl server itself. Now you have a running turtl which is available under 'http://localhost:8181'.

Be aware: after you cancel the docker-compose the data will be lost. For productive usage you may want to store the postgres-data inside a docker volume.

Configuration via ENV-Variables

In docker you may want to set each configuration value (for example the database) via environment variables. You can override each default value via environment variable! Just create a variable named with the prefix TURTLE_ followed by the "yaml-path" written in UPPERCASE. For example: If you want to change the app.api_url value you have to define the variable name like TURTL_APP_API_URL.

Some configuration values are explained in config/config.yaml.default.

Integration tests

If you want to run the integration tests against this instance of the server you need to do two things:

1. Leave the app.secure_hash_salt value as it appears in config.yaml.default
2. Run node tools/populate-test.data.js