AstroPlant Backend

This repository contains utilities to build the modules that form the AstroPlant backend. The main API, necessary for running the backend, is available at the astroplant-api repository. A front-end UI for interacting with the backend is available at the astroplant-frontend-web repository.

Description of the backend architecture

The AstroPlant backend consists of various modules.

Communication between kits and the backend is over MQTT. A service ingests measurements over MQTT into the database. The main AstroPlant API implements the bi-directional kit RPC. It further implements the HTTP API used by front-end clients.

File tree

• ./docker contains Docker Compose scripts to spin up a development backend;
• ./pkgs contains nixpkgs package declarations used for backend services (astroplant-api and astroplant-frontend provide their own nixpkgs declarations in their respective repositories); and
• ./services contains NixOS service module declarations for the backend modules.
• ./flake.nix re-exports the NixOS service module declarations and provides a container declaration to spin up a NixOS-based development backend.

Creating a development backend

This repository provides two methods for creating backends for development purposes: Docker Compose and a NixOS container.

Docker Compose

A Docker Compose file to launch a development backend including the web front-end is available in the ./docker subdirectory.

To get started quickly, run:

$ git clone https://github.com/AstroPlant/astroplant-api.git
$ git clone https://github.com/AstroPlant/astroplant-frontend-web.git
$ git clone https://github.com/AstroPlant/astroplant-backend.git
$ cd astroplant-backend/docker
$ docker-compose up

Then navigate to http://localhost:5173 in your browser.

See the ./docker directory for more details.

NixOS container

A NixOS container declaration is given in ./flake.nix. On NixOS, you can start it imperatively:

$ git clone https://github.com/AstroPlant/astroplant-backend.git
$ cd astroplant-backend
$ sudo nixos-container create astroplant --flake .
$ sudo nixos-container start astroplant

See https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_Containers for more information.