Quick start

There are two ways to start: try pforte on your own machine with seeded demo data, or run it on a server.

Try it on your machine

You need Node.js 22, pnpm and Docker.

git clone https://github.com/progwise/pforte.git
cd pforte
cp .env.example .env
pnpm install
pnpm dev:keys            # makes COOKIE_KEYS and JWKS for development
pnpm dev:up              # Postgres and Mailpit (a mailbox that catches everything pforte sends)
pnpm db:migrate && pnpm db:seed
pnpm dev                 # pforte on http://localhost:3300

The seed makes demo users with the password dev-password, demo clients, claim types and an administrator. In a second terminal start the example application:

pnpm dev:example         # an example application on http://localhost:3400

Open http://localhost:3400, choose Sign in, and use anna.schmidt@example.com with dev-password. pforte then asks for a 6-digit code: it was sent by e-mail, and you find it in Mailpit at http://localhost:8026. Back in the example application you see the claims pforte put in the ID token.

To look at the administration, open http://localhost:3300/manage and sign in as admin@example.com with dev-password, and the code from Mailpit. There you find the users, the clients, the claim types, the audit log and the CSV import (the administration).

The demo users and clients have passwords and secrets everybody knows. They are for development only: a production start refuses to run while they exist.

Run it on a server

Production with Docker Compose runs pforte, Postgres and Caddy, which gets and renews the TLS certificate, with secrets as files and an unprivileged pforte on a read-only filesystem. You need a machine with Docker, a host name that points to it, ports 80 and 443, and a mail server. In short:

cd examples/production
./setup.sh               # makes the secrets, asks for the address of your mail server
$EDITOR .env             # the host name, the sender address, the name of your organisation
docker compose up -d

The image is ghcr.io/progwise/pforte. Pin a version in .env (PFORTE_IMAGE=ghcr.io/progwise/pforte:0.1.0); the changes of each version are in the changelog. Every setting is described in the configuration reference.

What next

• Put people into pforte: create them in the administration, or import them from a CSV file. A system of record can keep them current through the admin API (syncing users).
• Connect an application: integrating an application walks through the example application, how to register your own, what the tokens contain, and the requests without a library. The example application uses the standard openid-client library and nothing specific to pforte.
• Make the pages your own: branding and languages.
• Read what pforte does against attacks, and what it asks of you: security measures.