Dolos API

This is the API server for Dolos.

It is a rails application that enables users to upload datasets, which will be analyzed with the Dolos CLI (running in a docker container) and the results will be available on a secret URL.

Refer to the installation instructions in the root of this repository how to self-host a fully working Dolos web app.

Development

The next steps will guide you through the installation process to start developing:

1. Installation

This is a Rails 7 running on Ruby 3. We use a MariaDB / MySQL database and have a delayed_job job worker that will spawn docker containers.

Using Nix

If you have Nix installed, you can use the provided flake.nix to get a shell with all dependencies (except docker) using with the following command:

nix develop    # provides a shell with all dependencies
bundle install # conventionally install ruby dependencies

The flake also provides the command server:start to start the database and job worker services. However, you need to set up the database first (see step 2).

Using docker-compose

The docker-compose.yml in this directory will start the development API server, job worker and MySQL database. You can start this environment with docker-compose up.

Note: the job worker needs access to spawn new docker containers, the docker daemon socket (unix:///var/run/docker.sock) will be mounted in the worker service.

Using your own environment

If you want to use your own environment, you will need to install the following dependencies:

• The correct version of Ruby (see .ruby-version)
• MySQL or MariaDB (see config/database.yml)
• Docker

You will also need to install the dependencies with bundle install and the job worker with rails jobs:work.

2. Database setup

You only really need to run one command: rails db:prepare. This will create the database, run all migrations and run the seeds (if any).

Useful commands that you might need to perform these steps manually:

• rails db:create will create the database
• rails db:migrate will run migrations
• rails db:seed will run seeds
• rails db:drop will drop the database (all data will be lost)

3. Running the server and worker

You can start the server with rails server. This will start the API server on http://localhost:3000.

To be able to analyze datasets, you need to have the latest image of the Dolos docker

docker pull ghcr.io/dodona-ede/dolos:latest

You can start the job worker with rails jobs:work. This will start the job worker and will spawn docker containers to analyze datasets once they are uploaded.

4. Running the frontend

To interact with the API server you should run the dolos-web front-end in server mode. Refer to the instructions in the web/ directory of this repository.

Hosting Dolos API

You can also run the Ruby on Rails application directly without the use of docker-compose.

System requirements:

• Ruby (see .ruby-version)
• A MariaDB or MySQL database
• Docker Engine
• Recommended: a reverse proxy (Nginx, Apache, ...)

This application is deployed using capistrano. You can deploy the application with cap production deploy.