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Set-up Radiks for your DApp

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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.

TOC {:toc}

Task 1. Set up your Radiks server

Radiks-server is a node.js application that uses MongoDB as an underlying database.

Install and configure MongoDB

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 assumes 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 would install MongoDB on your application server or on a server connected to it. " %}

Download and install MongoDB 3.6 or higher 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.
Start the MongoDB service and verify it is running.
On your MongoDB instance, create a database for your application data.

You can use the Mongo shell to do this or you can install the MongoDB Compass software to explore and work with MongoDB data.
Create a username/password combination with root privileges on your new database.

Install and start the Radiks server

The easiest way to run radiks-server is to use the pre-packaged node.js server.

Install the radiks-server on a workstation or server.
```
npm install -g radiks-server
```
Or, if you prefer yarn:
```
yarn global add radiks-server
```
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 possible the database name.

Start the radiks-server in the command line to confirm your installation.

$ radiks-server
 (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.

radiks-server is ready on http://localhost:1260 ```

The radiks-server defaults to running on port 1260. To change the default port, specify the PORT environment variable in your environment.

By default the server is running at http://localhost:1260
Stop the radiks server process after you confirm it runs and your installation was a success.

Task 2. Set up your application

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.* .

Change directory to the root of you application code.
Install the install the radiks client package.

Use npm Use yarn

npm install --save radiks yarn add radiks

Use npm	Use yarn
`npm install --save radiks`	`yarn add radiks`

Configure the MongoDB for your application

Start the mongo shell application.

$ mongo
MongoDB shell version v4.2.0
connecting to: mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/?compressors=disabled&gssapiServiceName=mongodb
Implicit session: session { "id" : UUID("8d43cf80-490d-4cac-8bd6-40eec5c128de") }
MongoDB server version: 4.2.0
....

To enable free monitoring, run the following command: db.enableFreeMonitoring()
To permanently disable this reminder, run the following command: db.disableFreeMonitoring()
>

Create a new database for your application.

> show dbs
admin   0.000GB
config  0.000GB
local   0.000GB
> use test1
switched to db test1
> show dbs
admin   0.000GB
config  0.000GB
local   0.000GB
> db.createUser({user: "admin", pwd:"foobar1",roles: ["readWrite","dbAdmin"]});
Successfully added user: { "user" : "admin", "roles" : [ "readWrite", "dbAdmin" ] }

Add a user with administrative rights to the database.

> db.createUser({user: "admin", pwd:"foobar1",roles: ["readWrite","dbAdmin"]});
Successfully added user: { "user" : "admin", "roles" : [ "readWrite", "dbAdmin" ] }

Configure your application to use

Configure your application to use your radiks-server.

To configure your applciation as a radiks client, use code that looks like this when starting up your application:

 import { UserSession, AppConfig } from 'blockstack';
 import { configure } from 'radiks';

 const userSession = new UserSession({
   appConfig: new AppConfig(['store_write', 'publish_data'])
 })

 configure({
   apiServer: 'http://localhost:1260',
   userSession
 });

For more information on configuring and writing a Radiks a client application, see the Radiks client repository.

Create an MONGODB_URI environment variable on the same machine where you are running the radiks-server.

Use the mongodb://username:password@host:port/db_name format for your variable. For example, to set this variable in a bash shell:
```
export MONGODB_URI="mongodb://admin:foobar1@localhost:27017/test1"
```
mongodb://admin:foobar1@127.0.0.1:27017/test1
Build and run your application.

Configuration

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 exactly which URL it's available at.

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.

To configure radiks, use code that looks like this when starting up your application:

import { UserSession, AppConfig } from 'blockstack';
import { configure } from 'radiks';

const userSession = new UserSession({
  appConfig: new AppConfig(['store_write', 'publish_data'])
})

configure({
  apiServer: 'http://my-radiks-server.com',
  userSession
});

Authentication

Most of your code will be informed by following Blockstack's authentication documentation.

After your user logs in with Blockstack, you'll have some code to save the user's data in localStorage. You'll want to use the same UserSession you configured with Radiks, which can be fetched from the getConfig method.

import { User, getConfig } from 'radiks';

const handleSignIn = () => {
  const { userSession } = getConfig();
  if (userSession.isSignInPending()) {
    await userSession.handlePendingSignIn();
    await User.createWithCurrentUser();
  }
}

Calling User.createWithCurrentUser will do a few things:

Fetch user data that Blockstack.js stores in localStorage
Save the user's public data (including their public key) in Radiks-server
Find or create a signing key that is used to authorize writes on behalf of this user
Cache the user's signing key (and any group-related signing keys) to make signatures and decryption happen quickly later on

Models

Creating models for your application's data is where radiks truly becomes helpful. We provide a Model class that you can extend to easily create, save, and fetch models.

Quick start

import { Model, User } from 'radiks';

class Todo extends Model {
  static className = 'Todo';
  static schema = { // all fields are encrypted by default
    title: String,
    completed: Boolean,
  }
};

// after authentication:
const todo = new Todo({ title: 'Use Radiks in an app' });
await todo.save();
todo.update({
  completed: true,
});
await todo.save();

const incompleteTodos = await Todo.fetchOwnList({ // fetch todos that this user created
  completed: false
});
console.log(incompleteTodos.length); // 0

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