Manually deploy website

[ArchaeoBasti]

Hi!
First off: Great suite! SQLPage is exactly what I was searching for a long time and perfect for what I want to do.

The only thing I can't wrap my head around is how to self host my project. As my project is university-based we need to self-host the site and can't use the paid option of SQLPage, but what are the steps necessary to convert a locally funtioning SQLPage project into a website online? My university uses MySQL instead of SQLite, but that shouldn't be a problem right? But what to do with the sqlpage.exe? That I don't get. I am sure this was asked before, but except the very short description on the SQLPage site, I didn't find any detailed manuals.

Thanks a lot for the help!
Best
Sebastian

[lovasoa]

Hi @ArchaeoBasti !

It's hard to write a guide that would work for all setups. Does the university give you a linux server with root access over ssh ?

If so, the easiest way to get get started is

1. Install docker on the server if it's not already there.
2. Upload your site's files to the server
3. Run docker run -it --name sqlpage -p 8080:8080 --volume "$(pwd):/var/www" --rm lovasoa/SQLPage from the folder where you uploaded the site

[lovasoa]

If you need to connect to the university's MySQL server:

docker run -it --name sqlpage -p 8080:8080 --volume "$(pwd):/var/www" --env "DATABASE_URL=mysql://user:password@server/db" --rm lovasoa/SQLPage

[lovasoa]

As a side note, we recently enabled connections to external databases from https://editor.datapage.app/

So if you just ask your administrator to add a firewall rule to allow MySQL trafic from 148.113.171.191, then you can use editor with your own internal database.

[ArchaeoBasti]

Hi! Thanks for the information. I will ask my admins if this is possible. I have never worked with a docker, so I don't know :-)

[ArchaeoBasti]

Nah, doesn't work with Docker. Well I mean my university will not offer this. Isn't there a way to convert a SQLPage App into HTML and MySQL?

[lovasoa]

Hi @ArchaeoBasti,

Unfortunately, converting an SQLPage app into just HTML and MySQL isn’t possible. HTML is static, while MySQL is just a database—there needs to be something in between to process queries and generate pages dynamically. That’s exactly what SQLPage does: it takes SQL queries and turns them into a web interface.

Since Docker isn’t an option for you, you can run SQLPage directly on your university server.
Follow the instructions on https://sql-page.com/your-first-sql-website/ (download the Linux binary and put it on your server). If you encounter any issue, you can describe it in details here and we'll help!