docs/monica/content.md

What is Monica?

Monica is a great open source personal relationship management system to organize the interactions with your loved ones.

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How to use this image

There are two versions of the image you may choose from.

The apache tag contains a full Monica installation with an apache webserver. This points to the default latest tag too.

The fpm tag contains a fastCGI-Process that serves the web pages. This image should be combined with a webserver used as a proxy, like apache or nginx.

Using the apache image

This image contains a webserver that exposes port 80. Run the container with:

docker run --name some-%%REPO%% -d -p 8080:80 %%IMAGE%%

Using the fpm image

This image serves a fastCGI server that exposes port 9000. You may need an additional web server that can proxy requests to the fpm port 9000 of the container. Run this container with:

docker run --name some-%%REPO%% -d -p 9000:9000 %%IMAGE%%:fpm

Using an external database

You'll need to setup an external database. Monica currently support MySQL/MariaDB database. You can also link a database container, e. g. --link my-mysql:db, and then use db as the database host on setup. More info is in the Docker Compose section.

Persistent data storage

To have a persistent storage for your datas, you may want to create volumes for your db, and for monica you will have to save the /var/www/html/storage directory.

Run a container with this named volume:

docker run -d \
        -v monica_data:/var/www/html/storage \
        %%IMAGE%%

Run commands inside the container

Like every Laravel application, the php artisan command is very usefull for Monica. To run a command inside the container, run

docker exec CONTAINER_ID php artisan COMMAND

Or for Docker Compose:

docker compose exec %%REPO%% php artisan COMMAND

where %%REPO%% is the name of the service in your compose.yaml file.

Configuration using environment variables

The Monica image will use environment variables to setup the application. See Monica documentation for common used variables you should setup.

Running the image with Docker Compose

See some examples of Docker Compose possibilities in the example section.

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Apache version

This version will use the apache image and add a mysql container. The volumes are set to keep your data persistent. This setup provides no ssl encryption and is intended to run behind a proxy.

Make sure to pass in values for APP_KEY variable before you run this setup.

1. Create a compose.yaml file

   services:
     app:
       image: monica
       depends_on:
         - db
       ports:
         - 8080:80
       environment:
         - APP_KEY= # Generate with `echo -n 'base64:'; openssl rand -base64 32`
         - DB_HOST=db
         - DB_USERNAME=monica
         - DB_PASSWORD=secret
       volumes:
         - data:/var/www/html/storage
       restart: always
   
     db:
       image: mariadb:11
       environment:
         - MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD=true
         - MYSQL_DATABASE=monica
         - MYSQL_USER=monica
         - MYSQL_PASSWORD=secret
       volumes:
         - mysql:/var/lib/mysql
       restart: always
   
   volumes:
     data:
       name: data
     mysql:
       name: mysql
   

2. Set a value for APP_KEY variable before you run this setup. It should be a random 32-character string. You can for instance copy and paste the output of echo -n 'base64:'; openssl rand -base64 32:

3. Run

   docker compose up -d
   

   Wait until all migrations are done and then access Monica at http://localhost:8080/ from your host system. If this looks ok, add your first user account.

4. Run this command once:

   docker compose exec app php artisan setup:production
   

FPM version

When using FPM image, you will need another container with a webserver to proxy http requests. In this example we use nginx with a basic container to do this.

1. Download nginx.conf and Dockerfile file for nginx image. An example can be found on the example section

   mkdir web
   curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/monicahq/docker/main/.examples/full/web/nginx.conf -o web/nginx.conf
   curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/monicahq/docker/main/.examples/full/web/Dockerfile -o web/Dockerfile
   

   The web container image should be pre-build before each deploy with: docker compose build.

2. Create a compose.yaml file

   services:
     app:
       image: monica:fpm
       depends_on:
         - db
       environment:
         - APP_KEY= # Generate with `echo -n 'base64:'; openssl rand -base64 32`
         - DB_HOST=db
         - DB_USERNAME=monica
         - DB_PASSWORD=secret
       volumes:
         - data:/var/www/html/storage
       restart: always
   
     web:
       build: ./web
       ports:
         - 8080:80
       depends_on:
         - app
       volumes:
         - data:/var/www/html/storage:ro
       restart: always
   
     db:
       image: mariadb:11
       environment:
         - MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD=true
         - MYSQL_DATABASE=monica
         - MYSQL_USER=monica
         - MYSQL_PASSWORD=secret
       volumes:
         - mysql:/var/lib/mysql
       restart: always
   
   volumes:
     data:
       name: data
     mysql:
       name: mysql
   

3. Set a value for APP_KEY variable before you run this setup. It should be a random 32-character string. You can for instance copy and paste the output of echo -n 'base64:'; openssl rand -base64 32:

4. Run

   docker compose up -d
   

   Wait until all migrations are done and then access Monica at http://localhost:8080/ from your host system. If this looks ok, add your first user account.

5. Run this command once:

   docker compose exec app php artisan setup:production
   

Make Monica available from the internet

To expose your Monica instance for the internet, it's important to set environment variable APP_ENV=production. In this case https mode will be mandatory.

Using a proxy webserver on the host

One way to expose your Monica instance is to use a proxy webserver from your host with SSL capabilities. This is possible with a reverse proxy.

Using a proxy webserver container

See some examples of Docker Compose possibilities in the example section to show how to a proxy webserver with ssl capabilities.