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Docker

This guide will help you to deploy solidtime using Docker and Docker Compose. We have a repository with some example configurations for Docker Compose. You can find it here. The guide will reference this repository.

Prerequisites​

Preparation​

Before you start you need to ask yourself a few questions:

Do I have a database?

Some people might already have a managed Postgres database that they want to use for solidtime. If you don't have a database yet, you can look at the example with a Postgres container in the repository. Self-hosting a database is a whole other topic and we won't cover it in this guide. If you plan to use solidtime in a production environment and you don't have experience managing a database server, we recommend using a managed database service. If you plan on using one database server for multiple applications, you should consider using a separate database for each application with different credentials that only have access to one of the databases.

What do I want to use to send the email that solidtime is sending?

Solidtime sends emails for notifications and password resets. You need to configure an SMTP server to send these emails. If you don't have your own SMTP server, which is probably the case for most people, you can use a transactional email service.

What do you want to run before the solidtime containers?

The solidtime docker image contains a webserver, but the image is not meant to handle things like SSL certificates, etc. The image is designed to be run behind a reverse proxy like Nginx or Traefik. If you don't have a reverse proxy yet, you can use the example with Traefik in the repository.

Installation​

1. Choose the example that fits your needs the best​

The Self-Hosting example repository contains multiple examples for different setups. You can choose the one that fits your needs the best.

Read the instructions in the README of the example you chose.

info

If you use the images for a setup different from our examples, please keep in mind that the default service port of the solidtime container is 8000.

2. The environment files​

The docker setup has two configuration files for the environment variables. The laravel.env file contains the environment variables for the solidtime application and the .env file contains the environment variables for the docker compose config file. The examples all contain template files that you can copy and adjust to your needs.

  • .env.example --> .env
  • laravel.env.example --> laravel.env

You need to adjust the environment variables in the .env and laravel.env files to your needs. You can find for information about the environment variables in the configuration documentation.

3. Generate the application keys​

You need to generate the application keys for your solidtime installation. You can do this by running the following command:

docker compose run scheduler php artisan self-host:generate-keys

This command will output random values for the APP_KEY, PASSPORT_PRIVATE_KEY, and PASSPORT_PUBLIC_KEY environment variables. You can copy these values and add them to the laravel.env file.

4. Start the containers​

After you have set up the environment files and generated the application keys, you can start the containers.

docker compose up -d

You can view the logs of the containers with the following command:

docker compose logs -f

5. Migrate database​

To create the database tables, you need to run the migrations. You can do this by running the following command:

docker compose exec scheduler php artisan migrate --force

You also need to do this after every update of the solidtime application. If you have a simple setup with only one container, you can also configure the container to run the migrations on startup. To do this you can set the environment variable AUTO_DB_MIGRATE to true in the docker-compose.yml file.

  app:
    # ...
    environment:
      CONTAINER_MODE: http
      AUTO_DB_MIGRATE: "true" # <--- Add this line

6. Access the application​

You can now access the application in your browser. The URL depends on your setup.

7. Testing the setup (optional)​

You can find information about how to test the setup in the testing documentation.

8. Activate Desktop client access (optional)​

The solidtime Desktop client authenticates with the API with OAuth. The Desktop client needs a client. You can create a client by running the following command:

docker compose exec scheduler php artisan passport:client --name=desktop --redirect_uri=solidtime://oauth/callback --public -n

This command will output the client ID. Write down the client ID, you will need it to configure the Desktop client.

In the solidtime Desktop you can now Configure the API URL and the client ID. For that start the app and click on "Instance Settings".

Screenshot of soldtime Desktop showing the start screen with an arrow on the Instance Settings button

There you can enter the API URL and the client ID.

Screenshot of soldtime Desktop showing the Instance Settings interface

Update​

To update solidtime, you can pull the latest image from the Docker registry.

  1. Change the tag of the image in the docker-compose.yml file to the new version. If you are using the latest tag, you don't need to change anything.
  2. Pull the new image:
docker compose pull
  1. Recreate the containers:
docker compose up -d
  1. If you don't use the auto migration config, you need to run the migrations:
docker compose exec scheduler php artisan migrate --force
  1. Remove the old images. Docker images can use a lot of space and vServers often don't have a ton of storage. You can do this with the following command:
docker system prune -a -f