Setup

This shows you how to setup SolarThing server.

Note

It is recommended to configure SolarThing Server on the same device as the CouchDB database. Assuming a docker install, this page will recommend you append to the docker-compose.yml file you created for CouchDB’s docker install.

Setting Up

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Before we begin, setup a directory (or use part of an existing directory) to contain SolarThing Server configuration.

Here is an example file structure (this particular file structure assumes you have CouchDB installed in docker as mentioned in CouchDB Docker Install):

~/Documents/containers/solarthing/
├── couchdb/
│   ├── data/
│   └── etc/
├── server/
│   └── config/
│       └── base.json
└── docker-compose.yml

mkdir -p ~/Documents/containers/solarthing/server/{config,logs}
cd ~/Documents/containers/solarthing/
nano docker-compose.yml

You should now be editing docker-compose.yml. If it is the case that you already have a docker-compose file, you may append to it. If you do not already have this file, you may paste the contents below and exclude the couchdb section:

services:
  couchdb:
    # ... (Your existing CouchDB configuration here if you have already configured it)
  server:
    image: 'ghcr.io/wildmountainfarms/solarthing-server:latest'
    container_name: solarthing-server
    restart: 'unless-stopped'
    command: --spring.config.location=config/application.properties
    volumes:
      - './server/config:/app/config:ro'
      - './server/logs:/app/logs'

Now let’s edit application.properties:

nano server/config/application.properties

application.properties

You should now be editing application.properties.

Paste this into your file:

solarthing.config.database=config/couchdb.json

With the above configuration, you must have a couchdb.json file in your config directory.

couchdb.json

Here’s an example couchdb.json file to put in server/config/couchdb.json:

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{
  "type": "couchdb",
  "config": {
    "url": "http://couchdb:5984"
  }
}

If necessary, make sure to alter the URL if you aren’t following the documentation exactly as recommended.

Note

The SolarThing Server program only reads from the database, so assuming you set up CouchDB using SolarThing’s CouchDB Setup tool, then you don’t need to specify a username and password.

Running the program

That’s all the configuration you need. Just point it to your couchdb.json. Now let’s cd up a directory and run it:

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sudo docker compose up

You should see a bunch of log messages. After about 5 seconds, you should see messages similar to those at the end:

2021-12-20 23:48:31.030  INFO 269837 --- [           main] o.s.b.w.embedded.tomcat.TomcatWebServer  : Tomcat started on port(s): 8080 (http) with context path ''
2021-12-20 23:48:31.042  INFO 269837 --- [           main] m.r.s.rest.SolarThingGraphQLApplication  : Started SolarThingGraphQLApplication in 3.846 seconds (JVM running for 4.88)

If you do, it’s working as intended!

Running in background

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Running any docker container in the background is trivial with docker compose:

sudo docker compose up -d

Now that you have SolarThing Server running, you may continue to configuring Grafana, or just enjoy your web interface that is hosted on port 8080.