This guide will help you setup, update, and maintain your self-hosted Maybe application with Docker Compose. Docker Compose is the most popular and recommended way to self-host the Maybe app.
If you want a less technical way to host the Maybe app, you can host on Render as an alternative to Docker Compose.
Follow the guide below to get your app running.
Complete the following steps:
- Install Docker Engine by following the official guide
- Start the Docker service on your machine
- Verify that Docker is installed correctly and is running by opening up a terminal and running the following command:
# If Docker is setup correctly, this command will succeed
docker run hello-world
Open your terminal and create a directory where your app will run. Below is an example command with a recommended directory:
# Create a directory on your computer for Docker files
mkdir -p ~/docker-apps/maybe
# Once created, navigate your current working directory to the new folder
cd ~/docker-apps/maybe
Make sure you are in the directory you just created and run the following command:
# Download the sample docker-compose.yml file from the Maybe Github repository
curl -o compose.yml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maybe-finance/maybe/main/docker-compose.example.yml
This command will do the following:
- Fetch the sample docker compose file from our public Github repository
- Creates a file in your current directory called
compose.yml
with the contents of the example file
At this point, the only file in your current working directory should be compose.yml
.
In order to configure the app, you will need to create a file called .env
, which is where Docker will read environment variables from.
To do this, run the following command:
touch .env
The app requires an environment variable called SECRET_KEY_BASE
to run.
We will first need to generate this in the terminal. If you have openssl
installed on your computer, you can generate it with the following command:
openssl rand -hex 64
Alternatively, you can generate a key without openssl or any external dependencies by pasting the following bash command in your terminal and running it:
head -c 64 /dev/urandom | od -An -tx1 | tr -d ' \n' && echo
Once you have generated a key, save it and move on to the next step.
Open the file named .env
that we created in a prior step using your favorite text editor.
Fill in this file with the following variables:
SECRET_KEY_BASE="replacemewiththegeneratedstringfromthepriorstep"
POSTGRES_PASSWORD="replacemewithyourdesireddatabasepassword"
You are now ready to run the app. Start with the following command to make sure everything is working:
docker compose up
This will pull our official Docker image and start the app. You will see logs in your terminal.
Open your browser, and navigate to http://localhost:3000
.
If everything is working, you will see the Maybe login screen.
The first time you run the app, you will need to register a new account by hitting "create your account" on the login page.
- Enter your email
- Enter a password
Most self-hosting users will want the Maybe app to run in the background on their computer so they can access it at all times. To do this, hit Ctrl+C
to stop the running process, and then run the following command:
docker compose up -d
The -d
flag will run Docker Compose in "detached" mode. To verify it is running, you can run the following command:
docker compose ls
Your app is now set up. You can visit it at http://localhost:3000
in your browser.
If you find bugs or have a feature request, be sure to read through our contributing guide here.
The mechanism that updates your self-hosted Maybe app is the GHCR (Github Container Registry) Docker image that you see in the docker-compose.yml
file:
image: ghcr.io/maybe-finance/maybe:latest
We recommend using one of the following images, but you can pin your app to whatever version you'd like (see packages):
ghcr.io/maybe-finance/maybe:latest
(latest commit)ghcr.io/maybe-finance/maybe:stable
(latest release)
By default, your app will NOT automatically update. To update your self-hosted app, run the following commands in your terminal:
cd ~/docker-apps/maybe # Navigate to whatever directory you configured the app in
docker compose pull # This pulls the "latest" published image from GHCR
docker compose build app # This rebuilds the app with updates
docker compose up --no-deps -d app # This restarts the app using the newest version
If you'd like to pin the app to a specific version or tag, all you need to do is edit the docker-compose.yml
file:
image: ghcr.io/maybe-finance/maybe:stable
After doing this, make sure and restart the app:
docker compose pull # This pulls the "latest" published image from GHCR
docker compose build app # This rebuilds the app with updates
docker compose up --no-deps -d app # This restarts the app using the newest version
If you are trying to get Maybe started for the first time and run into database connection issues, it is likely because Docker has already initialized the Postgres database with a different default role (usually from a previous attempt to start the app).
If you run into this issue, you can optionally reset the database.
PLEASE NOTE: this will delete any existing data that you have in your Maybe database, so proceed with caution. For first-time users of the app just trying to get started, you're generally safe to run the commands below.
By running the commands below, you will delete your existing Maybe database and "reset" it.
docker compose down
docker volume rm maybe_postgres-data # this is the name of the volume the DB is mounted to
docker compose up
docker exec -it maybe-postgres-1 psql -U maybe -d maybe_production -c "SELECT 1;" # This will verify that the issue is fixed