Quick Start

To get started quickly, clone the ClaperCo/Claper repository and follow the instructions below.

1. Clone the repo

   git clone https://github.com/ClaperCo/Claper.git

2. Go to the project directory

   cd Claper

3. Run Docker compose

   docker compose up

Required configuration

In the downloaded repository, you will find a .env.sample file. You can copy this file to .env and edit it to match your configuration.

cp .env.sample .env

The required environment variables are DATABASE_URL, SECRET_KEY_BASE, and BASE_URL. Let's do as it asks and populate these required environment variables with our own values.

For the SECRET_KEY_BASE variable, you can generate a secret key with the following openssl command:

$ openssl rand -base64 48
oGBshkO1uLF4wjeFcoQjcRmHxX+YXL1XQKUaBcGVFa/i1mdmYyFWe4ISzTExj+5s

And then we decide on the BASE_URL where the instance would be accessible. Let's assume we choose http://claper.example.com

You .env file should look like this:

DATABASE_URL=postgresql://claper:claper@db:5432/claper
SECRET_KEY_BASE=oGBshkO1uLF4wjeFcoQjcRmHxX+YXL1XQKUaBcGVFa/i1mdmYyFWe4ISzTExj+5s
BASE_URL=http://claper.example.com

We can start our instance now but the requests would be served over HTTP. To serve the requests over HTTPS, we need a reverse proxy like Traefik or Nginx. We will use Traefik in this example.

SSL with Traefik

Before setting up SSL, you need to configure your DNS to point to the server where Claper is running.

Once your DNS is configured, add the Traefik service to the docker-compose.yml file:

services:
  traefik:
    image: traefik
    command:
      - "--api.insecure=true"
      - "--providers.docker=true"
      - "--providers.docker.exposedbydefault=false"
      - "--entrypoints.web.address=:443"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.myresolver.acme.tlschallenge=true"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.myresolver.acme.email=youremail@example.com"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.myresolver.acme.storage=/letsencrypt/acme.json"
    volumes:
      - "./letsencrypt:/letsencrypt"
      - "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro"
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"

Make sure to replace youremail@example.com with your email address. This is important for SSL certificate generation.

Then, add the traefik label to the app service:

services:
  app:
    ...
    labels:
      - "traefik.enable=true"
      - "traefik.http.routers.app.rule=Host(`claper.example.com`)"
      - "traefik.http.routers.app.tls.certresolver=myresolver"
      - "traefik.http.routers.app.entrypoints=web"
      - "traefik.http.services.app.loadbalancer.server.port=4000"

If Docker containers are already running, remove all the containers and start them again:

docker compose down
docker compose up -d

Update your BASE_URL

Don't forget to update the BASE_URL in your .env file to https://claper.example.com.

Now, you can access your Claper instance at https://claper.example.com.