How to deploy

Emotial runs as four Docker containers on one network: web, api, postgres, and minio. That is how production runs on Slater's server. The live site is https://emotial.app.

The Dockerfiles are source/web/Dockerfile and source/api/Dockerfile. source/docker-compose.yml starts all four.

What you need

• Docker with Compose
• About 4 GB of disk for the images

Start the stack

From submission/source/:

1. Start Postgres and MinIO.

docker compose up -d postgres minio

2. Apply the schema. The API connects to Postgres but does not create tables.

docker compose exec -T postgres psql -U emotial -d emotial -v ON_ERROR_STOP=1 < schema.sql

3. Build and start the API and web app.

docker compose up -d --build api web

4. Open http://localhost:3000. Create an account using the login instructions.

MinIO console: user emotial, password emotial-minio-secret. The API creates the emotial bucket when it starts.

Stop

docker compose down

Add -v if you want to delete the Postgres and MinIO volumes too.

How the containers talk

The browser loads the web app on port 3000 and calls the API on port 8080.

The API reaches Postgres as hostname postgres and MinIO as minio:9000.

Browsers load uploaded images from http://localhost:9000/emotial/... (path-style), not from the Docker hostname.

NEXT_PUBLIC_API_BASE_URL is set when the web image is built. If you change the public API URL, rebuild web.

Production notes

On a public host, change these in the compose file (or whatever you use to run it) before you go live:

• EMOTIAL_SERVER_ALLOW_ORIGINS and EMOTIAL_SERVER_APP_URL to https://your-domain
• Web build args NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL and NEXT_PUBLIC_API_BASE_URL to those public URLs
• EMOTIAL_AUTH_JWT_SECRET to a new value (openssl rand -hex 32)
• EMOTIAL_AUTH_SECURE_COOKIES to true
• EMOTIAL_MEDIA_PUBLIC_URL to the URL browsers use for objects (a CDN origin, or the published MinIO host)
• Postgres and MinIO passwords

The API image build compiles with libvips (HEIF/AVIF) and runs the media tests during docker build.