Using Radiks with your application requires a Radiks server and a client application constructed to use the server. In this article, you learn how to install, setup, and run a pre-packaged Radiks server that connects to MongoDB. You also learn how to establish your DApp application as a client for that server.
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## Task 1. Set up your Radiks server
Radiks-server is a `node.js` application that uses [MongoDB](https://www.mongodb.com/) as an underlying database.
In the future, Radiks-server will support various different databases, but right now, only MongoDB 3.6 or higher is supported. MongoDB 3.6 and higher contains fixes required for naming patterns in keys.
{% include note.html content="The steps assume you want to install and run the MongoDB software locally on your workstation for testing and development. If you are deploying for a production application, you will install MongoDB on your application server or on a server connected to it. " %}
1.<ahref="https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/administration/install-community/"target="_blank">Download and install MongoDB 3.6 or higher</a> on your workstation.
You can also install MongoDB using your favorite package manager; for example, Homebrew is recommended for macOS. If you are testing on a local workstation, you can use a `docker` image instead of installing locally.
You can use the <ahref="https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/mongo/"target="_blank">Mongo shell</a> to do this, or you can <ahref="https://www.mongodb.com/download-center/compass"target="_blank">install the MongoDB Compass</a> software to explore and work with MongoDB data.
The default port for Mongodb is `27017`; your instance may be configured differently. By default, Radiks-server will use `'mongodb://localhost:27017/radiks-server'` as the `MongoDB_URI` value. This is suitable for local testing, but in production, you'll want to change the hostname and possibly the database name.
(node:37750) DeprecationWarning: current Server Discovery and Monitoring engine is deprecated and will be removed in a future version. To use the new Server Discover and Monitoring engine, pass option { useUnifiedTopology: true } to the MongoClient constructor.
You must set up your application to use Radiks. This requires installing the `radiks` client package and then configuring your application to connect to your Radiks server.
### Install the radiks client software
If you are using `blockstack.js` version 18 or earlier, you must use the Radiks version 0.1.\*, otherwise if you're using `blockstack.js` version 19 or higher, use Radiks 0.2.\* .
1. Change directory to the root of you application code.
To set up radiks.js, you only need to configure the URL that your Radiks-server instance is running on. If you're using the pre-built Radiks server, this will be `http://localhost:1260`. If you're in production or are using a custom Radiks server, you'll need to specify the exact URL where it's available.
Radiks also is compatible with version 19 of blockstack.js, which requires you to configure a `UserSession` object to handle all user-data-related methods. You'll need to define this and pass it to your Radiks configuration so that Radiks can know how to fetch information about the current logged in user.
After your user logs in with Blockstack, you'll have some code to save the user's data in your applications `localStorage`. You'll want to use the same `UserSession` you configured with Radiks, which can be fetched from the `getConfig` method.
After you have added Radiks to your application, build and run the application. Test the application by logging in with your Blockstack ID. Create some data using the application. If you inspect the MongoDB database, you should see the encrypted data stored in the database.
Creating models for your application's data is where radiks truly becomes helpful. To learn how to use models, see the [Create and use models](radiks-models.html) section.