Self-hosting

Self-hosting Triplit

To enable sync, you need to run a Triplit server. The server is a Node.js application that talks to various Triplit clients over WebSockets and HTTP.

You have several options for running the server:

Docker

Each release of the server is published as a Docker image (opens in a new tab). You can deploy the server to a cloud provider like fly.io (opens in a new tab), DigitalOcean (opens in a new tab), or AWS. You'll also want to setup a volume to persist the database.

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:

run.js
import { createServer } from '@triplit/server';
 
const port = +(process.env.PORT || 8080);
 
const startServer = createServer({
  storage: '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();
  });
});

You can now deploy the server to a cloud provider that supports Git deploys, like Vercel (opens in a new tab), Netlify (opens in a new tab), or Render (opens in a new tab).

Secrets

There are a few secrets that you need to provide to the server to enable certain features.

JWT_SECRET

The server uses JWT tokens to authenticate clients, and you need to provide a secret to sign and verify these tokens. You can set the secret by setting the JWT_SECRET environment variable. Triplit supports both symmetric (HS256) and asymmetric (RS256) encryption algorithms for JWTs. You will need to generate client tokens signed with the appropriate algorithm. With the PROJECT_ID and JWT_SECRET set, you can also use the triplit dev CLI to generate these tokens for you.

PROJECT_ID=your-project-id JWT_SECRET=your-secret triplit dev

You can also do it with the jsonwebtoken package (e.g. if you wanted to use asymmetric encryption) :

import jwt from 'jsonwebtoken';
 
const anonKey = jwt.sign(
  {
    'x-triplit-token-type': 'anon',
    'x-triplit-project-id': process.env.PROJECT_ID,
  },
  process.env.PUBLIC_KEY,
  { algorithm: 'RS256' }
);
 
const serviceKey = jwt.sign(
  {
    'x-triplit-token-type': 'secret',
    'x-triplit-project-id': process.env.PROJECT_ID,
  },
  process.env.PUBLIC_KEY,
  { algorithm: 'RS256' }
);

For more complicate authentication schemes, refer to our authentication guide.

LOCAL_DATABASE_URL (optional)

If you use the sqlite storage adapter, the server will create the database file at ./app.db in the server's directory. If you want to override this (as is sometimes necessary for Cloud providers with their own separately managed storage volumes) you can set the LOCAL_DATABASE_URL environment variable.

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.

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