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Installation Guide

Welcome to the installation guide for the Holdfast Roleplay Microservice. This guide will walk you through the process of setting up the microservice in your Next.js 13 project using Prisma. Please ensure you have the following prerequisites before you begin:

For our internal use case, we used Planet Scale for the MySQL database and Mailgun for the SMTP server.

Quick Installation​

The quick installation will use the current main branch to deploy the service to Digital Ocean's App Platform. Note that this method will still require a MySQL database, SMTP server, and Prisma Client in order to initialize/seed the database.

Deploy to DO

note

It is recommended that sensitive environment variables have 'Encrypt' enabled for better security. Some environment variables to consider are the following:

  • NEXTAUTH_SECRET
  • SMTP_USERNAME
  • SMTP_PASSWORD
  • DATABASE_URL
  • STAGING_DATABASE_URL

Manual Installation​

The manual installation allows you to clone the repository and make any local changes for your implementation.

Step 1: Clone the Repository​

First, clone the Holdfast Roleplay Microservice repository to your local machine.

Step 2: Install Dependencies​

Navigate to the project directory and install the required dependencies using npm:

cd holdfast-roleplay-microservice
npm install

Step 3: Set Up Environment Variables​

Create a new .env file in the project root based on the .env.example file provided. Open the .env file and fill in the necessary values for your MySQL database and SMTP server configuration. These variables are crucial for the proper functioning of the microservice.

# Authentication variables used for online interface
NEXTAUTH_SECRET='Very Super Secret Text'
NEXTAUTH_URL='Your URL'

# SMTP Details to send invite codes
SMTP_USERNAME='enter smtp username'
SMTP_PASSWORD='enter smtp email password'
SMTP_EMAIL='enter smtp email'
SMTP_PORT='587'
SMTP_HOST='smtp.hostname.io'

# Use 'production' when service is deployed
NODE_ENV='development'

# Holdfast-Roleplay-Microservice uses MySQL by default. If you would like to use a different DB, you may need to adjust the `prisma/schema.prisma` file 
# Prisma supports the native connection string format for PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, SQL Server, MongoDB and CockroachDB.
# See the documentation for all the connection string options: https://pris.ly/d/connection-strings
DATABASE_URL='mysql://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/DATABASE?schema=SCHEMA'
STAGING_DATABASE_URL='mysql://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/DATABASE?schema=SCHEMA'

Step 4: Prisma Setup​

Ensure you have Prisma Client installed globally. If not, you can install it using:

npm install -g prisma

Next, generate the Prisma Client by running:

npx prisma generate

Step 5: Database Seeding​

Before deploying, it's recommended to seed your database with initial data. Use the following command to seed the database using Prisma:

npx prisma db seed

Step 6: Deployment​

With the dependencies installed, environment variables configured, and the database seeded, you are now ready to deploy your Holdfast Roleplay Microservice using Next.js 13.

For our internal use case, we deployed the service on Digial Ocean's App Platform.

Conclusion​

Congratulations! You've successfully set up the Holdfast Roleplay Microservice on your Next.js 13 project. You can now start creating immersive roleplaying experiences with player management, inventory systems, quests, dialogues, and more.

If you encounter any issues or have questions, feel free to seek help on our GitHub repository's Issues section.