Installation
DreamFactory is supported on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.
Get started with DreamFactory by following the installation instructions below. To get started select an install method and platform below.
Contents
GitHub
You can install DreamFactory directly from GitHub. We have provided platform specific instructions. If your desired platform is not available, you may need to modify the instructions presented herein.
Automated Installers
Automated installers for CentOS, Debian, Fedora, and Ubuntu are included in the GitHub repository. You can learn more about these installers here. These installers support both DreamFactory OSS and commercial versions.
Required Software and Extensions
At a minimum, you will need the following software and extensions installed and enabled on your system in order to successfully clone and install DreamFactory.
- PHP 7.4+ - check and install the requirements below for your particular environment.
- PHP Migration guide
- PHP required extensions: Curl, MBString, MongoDB, SQLite, and Zip. You may need to install other extensions depending upon DreamFactory usage requirements. If you don't plan on using MongoDB, please remove the
df-mongodb
requirement fromcomposer.json
, or include the--ignore-platform-reqs
option when running composer install.
- Git - see https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-Installing-Git
- A web server such as NGINX, Apache, or IIS. You may use PHP's built-in server for development purposes.
- One of four databases for storing configuration data: MS SQL Server, MySQL (MariaDB or Percona are also supported), PostgreSQL, or SQLite.
- Composer - see https://getcomposer.org/download/, may require cURL to be installed from particular environment below.
Operating system-specific instructions are available which may be useful if you need assistance satisfying these requirements:
- Linux
- Mac
- Windows
Installing and Configuring DreamFactory
The commands shown below are primarily for a Linux/Unix-based operating system, but should also work on Windows (directory structure notwithstanding) provided all the required software and extensions are installed.
- Clone this repository to a directory on your system. For testing, using a directory under your home directory is easiest (and demonstrated here), otherwise choices like
/var/www/
or/opt
may be preferred.
$ git clone https://github.com/dreamfactorysoftware/dreamfactory.git ~/df2
- Change your working path to that directory.
$ cd ~/df2
- Install dependencies using Composer. If you're installing DreamFactory for use in a production environment, include the
--no-dev
option to avoid installing development-specific packages.
$ composer install --no-dev
- Next, you'll want to run the following two setup-related commands:
$ php artisan df:env $ php artisan df:setup
- Note: In earlier versions of DreamFactory this command was named
dreamfactory:setup
ordf:setup
. As of DF 2.7.0 the command is changed todf:env
- Make sure your web server can read/write from/to the DreamFactory application's
storage
andbootstrap/cache
directories. Unix/Linux and OSX users can use thechown
andchmod
commands to set these permissions:
$ sudo chown -R {www user}:{your user group} storage/ bootstrap/cache/ $ sudo chmod -R 2775 storage/ bootstrap/cache/
Set Up a Web Server
If you're just trying out DreamFactory, consider using PHP's built-in web server:
$ php artisan serve
Alternatively, you'll want to provision a web server by following these instructions:
Nginx
Apache
Set Up a Database
Additional drivers may be required if you plan on REST-enabling a database:
Switching Your System Database
Your DreamFactory application manages many configuration details within an underlying database (four of which are supported: MySQL, MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and SQLite). If you want to change from one system database to another after you've already run setup/installation:
- Stop your web server
- Edit the
.env
file found in the DreamFactory application's root directory to define the correct driver, host, and port number. For example:
DB_CONNECTION=mysql DB_HOST=localhost DB_DATABASE=dreamfactory DB_USERNAME=dreamfactory DB_PASSWORD=dreamfactory DB_PORT=3306
- In your shell navigate to the DreamFactory application's root directory (
htdocs
in Bitnami installs) - Run these commands:
$ php artisan config:clear $ php artisan cache:clear $ php artisan df:setup
- Restart the web server
Bitnami Desktop/Server Installers
You can install DreamFactory using a simple GUI installer for the following desktop operating systems. Most of the common extensions and drivers are included with these installers.
- Linux (CentOS, Red Hat, Mint, Debian, and Ubuntu desktop and server).
- Mac OS X.
- Microsoft Windows (Windows 7, 8, 10 and Server 2008R2). Note: that some features may not be available or may be limited in this environment.
- Virtual machines are available virtual machine for VMware, VirtualBox, or other hypervisor environments.
Docker Image
The DreamFactory Docker image on DockerHub is now maintained by Bitnami. You can pull it and follow their instructions for deploying a Bitnami package of DreamFactory in Docker.
If you don't want to use Bitnami, you can still build your own docker image using our df-docker repo on GitHub.
IaaS Clouds
You can install DreamFactory on IaaS cloud platforms with Bitnami. Follow the instructions below:
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Microsoft Azure
- Google Cloud Platform
- Oracle Cloud Platform
- CenturyLink
- 1&1 Cloud Platform
- IBM SoftLayer
PaaS Clouds
You can install DreamFactory on PaaS cloud platforms (Platform as a Service). Follow the instructions below.
Raspberry Pi
You can install and configure DreamFactory on Raspberry Pi 2 as an open source IoT gateway. Follow the general instructions here.
Additional Drivers and Modules
- Apache Cassandra
- IBM Db2
- Microsoft SQL Server
- MySQL, MariaDB, or Percona
- MongoDB
- Node.js
- Oracle Database
- PostgreSQL
- SAP SQL Anywhere
- SQLite
- v8js
Installing DreamFactory Behind a Proxy
The DreamFactory installers rely upon several package managers to install not only the core platform software but also an array of dependencies critical to both the platform itself and the underlying operating system. In addition to using the Linux operating system's native installer (e.g. apt, yum, etc), examples of required third-party package managers and installation helpers include:
The installer scripts also reach out to GitHub to clone the DreamFactory OSS version (which can be upgraded to a commercial version as part of the installation process). Therefore, if you're running the server behind a proxy, you'll need to take some additional steps to account for the network restrictions, notably informing each package manager and installation helper of the proxy requirement.
Configuring curl
Create a file named .curlrc
and add the following line to it:
proxy = 123.456.789:port
PECL/PEAR
Modify the installation script to include this line *after* PEAR and PECL have been installed:
pear config-set http_proxy http://123.456.789:port
PIP
Create the file ~/.config/pip/pip.conf
and add this to it:
[global] proxy = http://123.456.789:port
GitHub
Add the following code to your ~/.git/config
file:
[http] proxy = http://123.456.789:port
RPM
If your operating system uses the RPM package manager, you'll need to modify rpm
statements to include the --httpproxy
flag. For example:
sudo rpm --httpproxy http://123.456.789:port -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
Troubleshooting
If you receive the below error please follow these instructions.
GitHub API limit (60 calls/hr) is exhausted, could not fetch https://api.github.com/repos/dreamfactorysoftware/df-adldap. Create a GitHub OAuth token to go over the API rate limit. You can also wait until XXXX-XX-XX XX:XX:XX for the rate limit to reset. Head to https://github.com/settings/tokens/new?scopes=repo&description=Composer to retrieve a token. It will be stored in "/root/.composer/auth.json" for future use by Composer.
First you will want to create a GitHub access token like so: https://help.github.com/en/articles/creating-a-personal-access-token-for-the-command-line
After creating the access token and applying it via the command line, configure Composer to use your personal access token: https://help.github.com/en/articles/creating-a-personal-access-token-for-the-command-line