Getting Started

This section only applies if you plan to self-host Unleash. If you are looking for our hosted solution you should head over to www.getunleash.io

Requirements

You will need:

• Node.js v18.0+
• PostgreSQL v13.0+
• Create an unleash user and database.

Start Unleash server

Whichever option you choose to start Unleash, you must specify a database URI (it can be set in the environment variable DATABASE_URL). If your database server is not set up to support SSL you'll also need to set the environment variable DATABASE_SSL to false

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Once the server has started, you will see the message:

Unleash started on http://localhost:4242

To run multiple replicas of Unleash simply point all instances to the same database.

The first time Unleash starts it will create a default user which you can use to sign-in to you Unleash instance and add more users with:

• username: admin
• password: unleash4all

If you'd like the default admin user to be created with a different username and password, you may define the following environment variables when running Unleash:

• UNLEASH_DEFAULT_ADMIN_USERNAME
• UNLEASH_DEFAULT_ADMIN_PASSWORD

The way of defining these variables may vary depending on how you run Unleash.

Option 1 - use Docker

Useful links:

• Docker image on dockerhub
• Unleash Helm Chart on artifacthub

Steps:

1. Create a network by running docker network create unleash
2. Start a postgres database:

docker run -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=some_password \
  -e POSTGRES_USER=unleash_user -e POSTGRES_DB=unleash \
  --network unleash --name postgres postgres

3. Start Unleash via docker:

docker run -p 4242:4242 \
  -e DATABASE_HOST=postgres -e DATABASE_NAME=unleash \
  -e DATABASE_USERNAME=unleash_user -e DATABASE_PASSWORD=some_password \
  -e DATABASE_SSL=false \
  --network unleash --pull=always unleashorg/unleash-server

Option 2 - use Docker-compose

Steps:

1. Clone the Unleash repository.
2. Run docker compose up -d in repository root folder.

Option 3 - from Node.js

1. Create a new folder/directory on your development computer.

2. From a terminal/bash shell, install the dependencies:

   npm

   npm init
   npm install unleash-server --save

   Yarn

   yarn init
   yarn add unleash-server

   pnpm

   pnpm init
   pnpm add unleash-server

3. Create a file called server.js, paste the following into it and save.

   const unleash = require('unleash-server');
   
   unleash
     .start({
       db: {
         ssl: false,
         host: 'localhost',
         port: 5432,
         database: 'unleash',
         user: 'unleash_user',
         password: 'password',
       },
       server: {
         port: 4242,
       },
     })
     .then((unleash) => {
       console.log(
         `Unleash started on http://localhost:${unleash.app.get('port')}`,
       );
     });

4. Run server.js:

   node server.js

Create an api token for your client

• API Token creation

Test your server and create a sample API call

Once the Unleash server has started, go to localhost:4242 in your browser. If you see an empty list of feature flags, try creating one with curl from a terminal/bash shell:

curl --location -H "Authorization: <apitoken from previous step>" \
  --request POST 'http://localhost:4242/api/admin/features' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' --data-raw '{\
  "name": "Feature.A",\
  "description": "Dolor sit amet.",\
  "type": "release",\
  "enabled": false,\
  "stale": false,\
  "strategies": [\
    {\
      "name": "default",\
      "parameters": {}\
    }\
  ]\
}'

Version check

• Unleash checks that it uses the latest version by making a call to https://version.unleash.run.
  • This is a cloud function storing instance id to our database for statistics.
• This request includes a unique instance id for your server.
• If you do not wish to check for upgrades define the environment variable CHECK_VERSION to anything else other than true before starting, and Unleash won't make any calls
  • export CHECK_VERSION=false