self-hosting.md

Self hosting

Using the hosted version of Cobalt works well but may not be ideal as there is a network latency along with occasional rate limiting during peak hours. To avoid these issues, you can self host Cobalt on your own server.

Requirements

Ensure that the following software has been installed on your server:

• Node.js ^5.6 (nvm recommended)
• MongoDB ^3.2.0

Installation

Verify that MongoDB is installed and running. Refer to the MongoDB installation guide for more information.

Next, install Cobalt.

$ npm install -g cobalt-uoft

You'll need to set the following environment variable (refer to this guide if you're unsure how to do so).

• COBALT_MONGO_URI : the MongoDB connection URI used to connect to your MongoDB database server (ex. mongodb://localhost/cobalt). This database will have Cobalt's datasets synced to it automatically when you run Cobalt.

Usage

To start your local instance:

$ cobalt

That's it! Cobalt should now be running on http://localhost:4242. You can also specifiy a different port to listen on via the -p command line argument (ex. $ cobalt -p 3000).

Use Cobalt as you normally would, under the new URL that is outputted during startup. No API key is required to authenticate requests on your local server.

Using Cobalt in an existing Express project

You can also create an instance of Cobalt in an existing Node.js project that uses Express.

var express = require('express');
var cobalt = require('cobalt-uoft');

var app = express();

var port = process.env.PORT || 4242;

// Serve the Cobalt APIs on the /cobalt URL prefix
app.use('/cobalt', cobalt.Server);

// Hello world
app.get('/', function(req, res) {
  res.status(200).send('Hello, world!');
});

app.listen(port, function() {
  console.log('Server running on port ' + port + '.');
});

Updating

npm update -g cobalt-uoft