AutoLog Local Development and Docker Deployment Guide

AutoLog supports two setup paths depending on your goal. Local Development gives you a fully editable environment — you run the .NET API and Angular dev server side-by-side against a local PostgreSQL instance, with hot-reload and the Scalar API reference UI available in your browser. Docker is the fastest route to a running instance: pull the pre-built images from Docker Hub and inject your secrets as environment variables — no build step required. Choose the tab below that matches your use case.

Local Development
Docker

Install Prerequisites

Before cloning, make sure the following tools are installed and available on your PATH:

.NET 10 SDK — required to build and run the ASP.NET Core API
Node.js v22+ — required for the Angular frontend and the ng CLI
PostgreSQL — a locally running PostgreSQL instance that AutoLog can connect to during development

Verify your installs:

dotnet --version   # should print 10.x.x
node --version     # should print v22.x.x or higher
psql --version     # should print psql (PostgreSQL) 15.x or higher

Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/JReyna217/AutoLog.git && cd AutoLog

Configure .NET User Secrets

AutoLog uses the .NET Secret Manager to keep database credentials and JWT keys out of source control. Run these commands from the repo root:

cd backend/src/AutoLog.API
dotnet user-secrets init

dotnet user-secrets set "ConnectionStrings:DefaultConnection" "Host=localhost;Port=5432;Database=AutoLogDb;Username=YOUR_USER;Password=YOUR_PASS"

dotnet user-secrets set "JwtSettings:Secret" "YOUR_LOCAL_VERY_LONG_SECRET_KEY_FOR_DEV"

The JWT secret must be at least 32 characters long. Use a random string generator to produce a strong value — it only needs to be set once per machine.

Apply Database Migrations

With your secrets configured, run EF Core migrations to create the AutoLogDb schema in your local PostgreSQL instance:

cd backend/src/AutoLog.API
dotnet ef database update

If you have modified entity classes and need to scaffold a new migration first:

dotnet ef migrations add InitialCreate \
  --project ../AutoLog.Infrastructure \
  --startup-project .

Run the Backend API

cd backend/src/AutoLog.API
dotnet run

The API starts on the port shown in your terminal output. In Development mode, the Scalar API Reference UI is available at /scalar/v1 — a fully interactive docs explorer with a DeepSpace theme and a C# HttpClient code sample generator.

Run the Angular Frontend

Open a second terminal from the repo root:

cd frontend
npm install
ng serve -o

The -o flag opens your default browser automatically. The app is available at http://localhost:4200. The Angular dev server supports hot-module replacement for a fast feedback loop.

Pull the Pre-built Images

The official AutoLog images are hosted on Docker Hub and compiled for linux/amd64. No local build is required:

docker pull julioreynadev/autolog-api:latest
docker pull julioreynadev/autolog-web:latest

Run the Backend API Container

Inject your database credentials, CORS origin, and JWT secret as environment variables at runtime. AutoLog uses the double-underscore convention (__) to map environment variables to appsettings.json keys:

docker run -d \
  --name autolog-api \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 5030:8080 \
  -e "ConnectionStrings__DefaultConnection=Host=host.docker.internal;Database=YOUR_DB;Username=YOUR_USER;Password=YOUR_PASS" \
  -e "Cors__AllowedOrigins__0=http://localhost:5020" \
  -e "JwtSettings__Secret=YOUR_VERY_LONG_SECRET_KEY" \
  julioreynadev/autolog-api:latest

Use host.docker.internal (instead of localhost) when your PostgreSQL instance is running on the Docker host machine. On Linux you may need to add --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway to the command.

Run the Frontend Web Container

The frontend container is served by Nginx. Pass the backend API URL via the API_URL environment variable so the Angular app knows where to send requests:

docker run -d \
  --name autolog-web \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 5020:80 \
  -e "API_URL=http://localhost:5030/api" \
  julioreynadev/autolog-web:latest

Once the container starts, the AutoLog UI is available at http://localhost:5020.

On first launch, register a new account using the /register route. The registration endpoint is open and creates your user in the database immediately. After registering, log in to receive your access and refresh tokens and begin adding vehicles and fuel logs.

Get Started

Deployment

Core Features

Authentication

AutoLog Local Development and Docker Deployment Guide

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Get Started

Deployment

Core Features

Authentication

Documentation Index

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love