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Create an application

To create an application, we are going to use the SERMAS CLI

Let's create a commodity alias for sermas-cli. It uses our same system user ID to avoid file permission issues.

If you're using Windows make sure to install and use WSL (Microsoft's tutorial to install WSL)

NOTE We assume you can use docker with your user. Add sudo to the command if it is not the case e.g. sudo docker ps

Create a command alias​

The alias sermas-cli will be used for all following commands

On Windows​

alias "sermas-cli=docker compose run --rm -it cli"

On Linux​

On Linux we must run docker commands using our user id (not root) in order to own the generated files and folders.

alias "sermas-cli=docker compose run --user `id -u` --rm -it cli"

Solving permissions issues​

It may happens that some directories get created with root ownership by docker and this causes your user to not being able to access them anymore.

You may notice errors like those

  • error: Failed to write file /data/cli.json: EACCES: permission denied, open '/data/cli.json'
  • error: Failed to create template EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/apps/myapp'

To fix those errors, set ownership of CLI related folders to your current user. E.g.

sudo chown -R `id -u` ./apps ./data/cli

Got stuck ?​

In case you got stuck and want to start over you can remove all the database and local data.

This is a destructive operation and you will lose the data in the system

docker compose down
# Drop local database, e.g. applications
docker volume rm sermas-toolkit-api_mongodb
# Drop keycloack data, users and clients
sudo rm data/keycloak -rf

Login with the admin user​

Use the following command and use the configured password (admin is the default).

sermas-cli auth login admin

Create an application template​

The CLI uses a directory structure to create and keep updated the application definition. It allows to specify configuration and assets to be uploaded.

sermas-cli app init /apps/myapp

The resulting structure is similar to the following

apps/
└── myapp
    ├── app.yaml
    ├── modules.yaml
    ├── repository
    │   ├── avatars
    │   │   └── anna.yaml
    │   ├── backgrounds
    │   │   ├── milkyway.jpg
    │   │   └── milkyway.yaml
    │   ├── documents
    │   │   ├── about.txt
    │   │   ├── about.yaml
    │   │   ├── toolkit.txt
    │   │   └── toolkit.yaml
    │   └── robots
    │       └── my-agv.yaml
    ├── repository.yaml
    ├── settings.yaml
    ├── tools.yaml

We'll learn more about the app structure later.

Let's create the application in the SERMAS API with

sermas-cli app save /apps/myapp

You should see a confirmation message.

The newly created app can be used in the kiosk app on http://localhost:8080

In case you received an error, check for errors in the logs with docker compose logs api.