DreamFactory is an open-source software package that provides a REST API generation and management platform. In this tutorial, we will go through the steps to install DreamFactory on Arch Linux.
Before we start the installation process, make sure you have the following prerequisites:
sudo privileges.The first step of the installation process is to install Apache, PHP, and MariaDB. We will use the following command to install them:
sudo pacman -S apache php php-apache mariadb
After the installation is complete, enable and start the services:
sudo systemctl enable httpd mariadb
sudo systemctl start httpd mariadb
Next, we will download and extract the latest stable release of DreamFactory. We can download it using the following command:
curl -o dreamfactory.tar.gz -L https://github.com/dreamfactorysoftware/dreamfactory/releases/latest/download/dreamfactory-opensource.tar.gz
Extract the downloaded package:
tar xf dreamfactory.tar.gz
DreamFactory requires a database to store its data. We will create a new database and user for DreamFactory by running the following commands:
mysql -u root -p
Enter your MariaDB root password and then run these SQL commands:
CREATE DATABASE dreamfactory;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON dreamfactory.* TO 'dreamfactory_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;
Make sure to replace 'password' with a secure password.
We will add a new virtual host for DreamFactory and enable SSL for secure connections. First, create a new configuration file /etc/httpd/conf/extra/dreamfactory.conf and add the following lines:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName your-domain.example.com
Redirect permanent / https://your-domain.example.com/
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:443>
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/server.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/server.key
ServerName your-domain.example.com
DocumentRoot /path/to/dreamfactory/public
<Directory /path/to/dreamfactory/public>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Make sure to replace your-domain.example.com and /path/to/dreamfactory/public with your own values.
Next, we will create a self-signed SSL certificate:
sudo mkdir /etc/ssl/private
sudo openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout /etc/ssl/private/server.key -x509 -days 365 -out /etc/ssl/certs/server.crt
Restart Apache to apply the changes:
sudo systemctl restart httpd
Go to the directory where you extracted DreamFactory in step 2:
cd dreamfactory*
Run the following command to install the dependencies:
composer install --no-dev -o
During the installation process, you will be prompted to provide some configuration details for DreamFactory. Select the MariaDB database option, and provide the hostname, database name, database username, and password that you previously created.
After the dependencies installation is completed, you will be prompted to create an admin user. Enter the required details to create the user.
Finally, we need to configure the .env file with our database credentials. Copy the .env.example file to .env.
cp .env.example .env
Edit the .env file and change the database details to the values you provided earlier:
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_DATABASE=dreamfactory
DB_USERNAME=dreamfactory_user
DB_PASSWORD=password
Make sure to save the changes.
Finally, start the server:
php artisan serve
You can now access DreamFactory by visiting https://your-domain.example.com in your browser, where your-domain.example.com is the domain you configured earlier.
That’s it! You now have DreamFactory installed on your Arch Linux server. You can now start using it to create REST APIs and manage them easily.
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