Production environment

The Docker Compose production environment provides an easy way to deploy Polis with the Voxit API Server. It includes a Voxit API Server, all Polis services as well as a PostgreSQL database but no frontend, OpenID Connect identity provider or email sending service.

Setup

Check out the Voxit repositories into a common base directory:

git clone https://gitlab.com/voxit/voxit-api-server.git
git clone https://gitlab.com/voxit/voxit-docker.git

Configuration

The Polis and Voxit API Server containers need to be configured before they can be started. Inside the voxit-docker repository copy env to .env and ensure all mandatory configuration settings mentioned below are set.

DATA_DIR

Specify the base directory where persistent data is stored.

VOXIT_API_SERVER_DIR

Specify the directory containing the voxit-api-server project.

VOXIT_FRONTEND_DIR

Specify the directory containing the voxit-example-frontend project.

POSTGRES_PASSWORD

Set the password of the PostgreSQL user.

POLIS_SERVER_NAME

Set the fully qualified name of the Polis server.

VOXIT_API_SERVER_HOSTNAME

Set the hostname of the Voxit API Server.

VOXIT_API_SERVER_DOMAINNAME

Set the domainname of the Voxit API Server.

VOXIT_API_SERVER_SECRET_KEY

Set the Voxit API Server secret key used for signing cookies and similar needs.

VOXIT_API_SERVER_CORS_ORIGINS

Specify the API frontend origin for CORS.

VOXIT_API_SERVER_IDP_API_BASE_URL

Set the OpenID Connect identity provider base URL.

VOXIT_API_SERVER_IDP_CLIENT_ID

Set the OpenID Connect identity provider client ID.

VOXIT_API_SERVER_IDP_CLIENT_SECRET

Set the OpenID Connect identity provider secret.

VOXIT_API_SERVER_AUTHENTICATION_DISABLED

Set to true in order to allow participants to vote and submit statements without authentication (not recommended for publicly accessible instances).

BIND_ADDRESS

Specify the address to listen on.

default: 127.0.0.1

UWSGI_PROCESSES

Set the number of uwsgi processes (see https://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/).

default: 4

UWSGI_THREADS

Set the number of uwsgi threads per process (see https://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/).

default: 4

POLIS_FROM_ADDRESS

Set the email from address used in emails sent by Polis.

default: "Polis polis@${POLIS_SERVER_NAME}"

EMAIL_TRANSPORT_TYPES

Specify a list of email transports which will be tries in order until sending succeeds (supported values: aws-ses, mailgun, maildev).

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID

Specify the AWS SES key ID if the "aws-ses" email transport is used.

AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

Specify the AWS SES API key if the "aws-ses" email transport is used.

MAILGUN_DOMAIN

Specify the Mailgun domain if the "mailgun" email transport is used.

MAILGUN_API_KEY

Specify the Mailgun API key if the "mailgun" email transport is used.

Running the container environment

Run the following command to build and run the containers:

cd voxit-docker && docker compose up

The Voxit API Server HTTP API server listens on the configured address on port 8000 and the Polis server on port 8001.

Warning

Note that when you make the Polis server publicly available anyone can participate in conversations without authentication, register an account and create new conversations.