Elemental low-code platform
A standards based, open low-code development platform built on nodejs with the ability to fallback to writing raw nodejs code when the provided tools cannot solve your problems.
Currently ships with:
- JSON Schema defined RESTful APIs
- Simple async messaging queues
- Integrations to external systems
- API builder
- Rulesets builder
- Interface/website builder
- OIDC/OAuth2.0 Identity Provider & Identity Management
Table of Contents
Installation
Installation can done using the prebuilt docker image or using the latest code from master.
Docker
You can pull down the latest docker image from dockerhub:
$> sudo docker pull philipskinner/elemental:master
$> sudo docker run -d -p 80:80 --name elemental philipskinner/elemental:master
; then open a browser and point it at (http://admin.elementalsystem.org).
The default administration login details are:
- Username: admin
- Password: admin
The docker image uses several pre-defined hostnames for the service, each of which resolves to 127.0.0.1:
- Kernel - http://kernel.elementalsystem.org
- Admin - http://admin.elementalsystem.org
- API - http://api.elementalsystem.org
- Integration - http://integration.elementalsystem.org
- Interface - http://interface.elementalsystem.org
- Storage API - http://storage.elementalsystem.org
- Rules - http://rules.elementalsystem.org
- Identity Provider - http://identity.elementalsystem.org
- Messaging/queues - http://queues.elementalsystem.org
From source
Follow these steps to build and run from source:
$> git clone https://github.com/PhilipSkinner/elemental-lowcode.git elemental-lowcode
$> cd elemental-lowcode && ./setup.sh
$> ./start.sh
You can directly run the kernel by executing the main.js file within the kernel directory:
$> cd kernel
$> node main.js
The following usage options are available when you do this:
Usage: node main.js [OPTIONS]
Options:
--sources [SOURCE_DIR] Sets the directory where your Elemental application
source code lives.
Note: If this is the first time you have run Elemental with a sources directory you will be prompted to enter an initial admin users credentials:
; then open the admin interface on http://localhost:8002. Each example comes with an admin user with the following credentials:
Database support
Elemental supports persistence of:
- Authentication details
- Data types
- Message queues
- Website session state
; with many storage options. These storage options are:
- In-memory
- Filesystem
- SQL:
- sqlite
- postgres
- mysql
- mariadb
- mssql
Documentation
Documentation is available within Elemental:
; or you can read it on the Elemental Documentation website.
Examples
Examples can be found in the elemental-examples repository.
To use the examples clone the repository locally then set Elemental to run from a specific example directory:
$> git clone https://github.com/PhilipSkinner/elemental-lowcode.git elemental-lowcode
$> git clone https://github.com/PhilipSkinner/elemental-examples.git elemental-examples
$> cd elemental-lowcode && ./setup.sh
$> cd kernel && node main.js --sources ../../elemental-examples/todo
; then open the admin interface on http://localhost:8002. Each example comes with an admin user with the following credentials:
- Username: admin
- Password: admin
Hosting
The recommended approach for deploying your application is to build on the dockerhub image. The following is an example dockerfile that builds and configures Elemental with a set of Elemental applications:
FROM philipskinner/elemental:master
#set dir
WORKDIR /var/elemental
#copy our files
COPY api /var/elemental/kernel/.sources/api
COPY data /var/elemental/kernel/.sources/data
COPY identity /var/elemental/kernel/.sources/identity
COPY integration /var/elemental/kernel/.sources/integration
COPY queues /var/elemental/kernel/.sources/queues
COPY rules /var/elemental/kernel/.sources/rules
COPY services /var/elemental/kernel/.sources/services
COPY website /var/elemental/kernel/.sources/website
#set environment
COPY nginx.conf /etc/nginx
ENV ELEMENTAL_KERNEL_HOST="http://kernel.mysite.com"
ENV ELEMENTAL_ADMIN_HOST="http://admin.mysite.com"
ENV ELEMENTAL_API_HOST="http://api.mysite.com"
ENV ELEMENTAL_INTEGRATION_HOST="http://integration.mysite.com"
ENV ELEMENTAL_INTERFACE_HOST="http://interface.mysite.com"
ENV ELEMENTAL_STORAGE_HOST="http://storage.mysite.com"
ENV ELEMENTAL_RULES_HOST="http://rules.mysite.com"
ENV ELEMENTAL_IDENTITY_HOST="http://identity.mysite.com"
ENV ELEMENTAL_QUEUE_HOST="http://queues.mysite.com"
#run our app
CMD ["./docker-start.sh"]
If you want to run the system outside of a docker container you must set the following environmental variables on your system:
- ELEMENTAL_KERNEL_HOST
- ELEMENTAL_ADMIN_HOST
- ELEMENTAL_API_HOST
- ELEMENTAL_INTEGRATION_HOST
- ELEMENTAL_INTERFACE_HOST
- ELEMENTAL_STORAGE_HOST
- ELEMENTAL_RULES_HOST
- ELEMENTAL_IDENTITY_HOST
- ELEMENTAL_QUEUE_HOST
Each of these needs to be a valid hostname that resolves to the relevant Elemental service.
Secrets
Elemental has built in support for secrets management. Secrets can be configured within your applications and then the secrets definition can be deployed on a per environment basis - outside of version control of your main application.
Secrets can be scoped for global access or restricted to a specific Elemental subsystem.
To deploy secrets you need to copy a JSON file for each secret into the kernel/.secrets directory. Each JSON file should follow this format:
{
"value": "my-secret-value"
}
; where the filename is secret-name.secret.json within the kernel/.secrets directory. You can copy these at build time within your dockerfile:
COPY my-secrets/*.json /var/elemental/kernel/.secrets/
Contributing
Contributions, code or otherwise, are very welcome!
To contribute a code change:
- Fork the master branch
- Carry out your code changes
- Run the unit tests -
nyc jasmine - Submit a pull request following pull request template
To contribute a none code change raise a ticket on the original repository.
Authors
 |
|---|
| Philip Skinner |
Support
Raise a ticket on the repository describing the issue in as much detail as possible.
Alternatively reach out to [email protected] and I'll reply as soon as I can.
Links
More information about Elemental can be found at:
The following are standards that Elemental attempts to follow:
Elemental relies upon several other projects, notable ones are:
License
Elemental is licensed under the terms of the MIT License and is free to use and free to modify.