Self-hosting Triplit

Docker Image

Each release of the server is published as a Docker image, which acts as the basis for most self hosted deploys. For more information on the docker image, see the Docker section.

General steps to self-host

To self-host Triplit, you will need to follow these general steps:

1. Choose a hosting platform: You can self-host Triplit on any platform that supports Docker, such as AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean, or even your own server.
2. Deploy the Triplit server: You can deploy the Triplit server using the Docker image aspencloud/triplit-server:latest.
3. Setup some file storage: You will need to set up file storage for the server so your data can persist across server restarts. Typically this is done by mounting a volume on the server.
4. Configure the server: You will need to configure the server with the necessary environment variables, such as JWT_SECRET, LOCAL_DATABASE_URL, and others. See the configuration section for more information.
5. Expose the server: You will need to expose the server to the internet so that clients can connect to it.
6. Test the server: You can test the server by sending a request to the /healthcheck endpoint to ensure it is running and healthy.

Guides for specific platforms are available in the platform guides section.

Health checks

The server exposes a health check endpoint at /healthcheck. This endpoint will return a 200 status code if the server is running and healthy.

Configuration

There are a few configuration options that you need to provide to the server to enable certain features. These are generally passed as environemnt variables or secrets to your server.

JWT_SECRET (required)

The server uses JWT tokens to authenticate clients, and you need to provide a symmetric secret or public key to verify these tokens that it receives. See the key generation guide for more information on how to generate these keys and proper values for the JWT_SECRET environment variable.

For external JWTs (ie those issued by a different service like Auth0, etc), refer to our authentication guide.

LOCAL_DATABASE_URL (required for durable storage)

An absolute path on the server's file system to the database file where the server will store any database files. This is required for durable storage options: lmdb, and sqlite. For example, you can set this to /mnt/triplitdb/app.db for sqlite.

EXTERNAL_JWT_SECRET (optional)

If you want your server to support JWTs signed by a second issuer, you can also set EXTERNAL_JWT_SECRET to that signing secret (or public key). For the server to recognize a JWT as "external", it must not have the x-triplit-token-type claim or if that claim is set, it must not have the value of anon or secret. Those specific combinations of claims are reserved for "internal" JWTs, e.g. the special anon and secret tokens.

CLAIMS_PATH (optional)

If you are using custom JWTs with nested Triplit-related claims, you can set the CLAIMS_PATH environment variable. The server will read the claims at the path specified by CLAIMS_PATH. Read the authentication guide for more information.

SENTRY_DSN (optional)

If you want to log errors to Sentry, you can set the SENTRY_DSN environment variable. The server will automatically log errors to Sentry.

VERBOSE_LOGS (optional)

If you want to log all incoming and outgoing messages and requests, you can set the VERBOSE_LOGS environment variable. This can be useful for debugging.

MAX_BODY_SIZE (optional)

If you want to increase the maximum body size for incoming requests, you can set the MAX_BODY_SIZE environment variable. This is useful if you want to send large payloads to your server. The default value is 100, corresponding to 100MB.

Building a custom server

The server is published as an NPM package, and you can install it by running:

npm install @triplit/server

The server also contains the remote Triplit database, which will persist data synced from your clients. The server supports different storage adapters, such as SQLite. Using the createServer function, you can create and configure a new server instance:

import { createServe, createTriplitStorageProvider } from '@triplit/server';
 
const port = +(process.env.PORT || 8080);
 
const startServer = createServer({
  storage: await createTriplitStorageProvider('sqlite'),
  verboseLogs: true,
});
 
const dbServer = startServer(port);
 
console.log('running on port', port);
process.on('SIGINT', function () {
  dbServer.close(() => {
    console.log('Shutting down server... ');
    process.exit();
  });
});

Storage

Triplit is designed to support any storage that can implement a key value store. The Docker image runs a SQLite server, but you may specify the storage adapter you want to use by setting the storage option with a custom server. Triplit provides some default configurations of our storage adapters, which you can use by setting the storage option to the appropriate string value for the adapter. These include:

• memory (default) - An in memory storage adapter, which is not durable and will not persist data across server restarts.
• sqlite - An SQLite storage adapter, which requires the installation of the better-sqlite3 package (opens in a new tab)
• lmdb - An LMDB storage adapter, which requires the installation of the lmdb package (opens in a new tab)

Typically this will use your LOCAL_DATABASE_URL environment variable so you'll want to make sure that's set.

You can also pass in an instance of an adapter or a function that returns an instance of an adapter.

function createAdapter() {
  return new MyCustomAdapter();
}
 
const startServer = createServer({
  storage: createAdapter,
});