Deploying the Supamode backend

The Supamode backend uses Hono as its framework.

Hono can be deployed to virtually any platform that runs server-side JavaScript, such as Node.js, Bun, Deno, Supabase Edge Functions, and Cloudflare Workers - which makes Supamode deployable pretty much anywhere.

In terms of hosting providers, we recommend easy-to-use platforms like Vercel and Railway - however, you can also deploy to any platform that supports server-side JavaScript.

Environment variables

The following environment variables are required to run the Supamode backend. Please make sure to set them in your hosting platform's environment variables:

APP_URL=http://localhost:5173
SUPABASE_URL=http://localhost:54321
SUPABASE_ANON_KEY=
SERVICE_ROLE_KEY=
# Grab this from the Supabase Settings -> Connect -> ORM -> Drizzle
SUPABASE_DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:postgres@127.0.0.1:54322/postgres

Let's go through each of these variables in more detail:

APP_URL

This is the URL of your Supamode frontend, as you've defined it in the VITE_SITE_URL environment variable in your Supamode frontend.

SUPABASE_URL

The URL of your Supabase project. This is used to connect to your Supabase project and it's the exact same URL as the one you use to connect to your Supabase project in your code.

SUPABASE_ANON_KEY

The anonymous key of your Supabase project. This is used to connect to your Supabase project. This is the same key as the one you use to connect to your Supabase project in your code.

SERVICE_ROLE_KEY

The service role key of your Supabase project. This is used to connect to your Supabase project as the service role. This is the same key as the one you use to connect to your Supabase project in your code.

SUPABASE_DATABASE_URL

This is the connection string to your Supabase database that Drizzle uses to connect to your Supabase database. You find this in the Supabase Settings.

This value may need the password to be escaped using the encodeURIComponent function, as it may contain special characters and can break the connection string.

Deploying the Supamode backend

We provide various commands to run Supamode with various configurations:

Running the backend with Node.js

To run the backend with Node.js, you can run the following commands:

First, build the backend:

pnpm --filter api run build

Then, run the Node.js API using the built files:

pnpm run start

Running the backend with Bun

To run the backend with Bun, you can run the following command:

pnpm run dev:bun

Running the backend with other platforms

Hono provides a lot of information on how to deploy Hono applications to various platforms. Please check out the [Hono documentation] (https://hono.dev/docs/getting-started/basic) for more information as to how to deploy the Hono API to your preferred platform.

Proxying the API

Using a proxy is required for passing cookies to the API. Below are some examples of how to proxy the API to your preferred platform.

Vite (development only)

In Vite (during development), we use the proxy option to proxy the API to the backend.

This will automatically rewrite the path from /api/... to http://localhost:3000/... once the request is made to the API server. The API server runs at port 3000 by default, but the front-end will call the API at /api/....

proxy: {
    '/api': {
        target: 'http://localhost:3000',
        changeOrigin: true,
        // rewrite the path to remove the /api prefix once the request is made to the API server
    rewrite: (path) => path.replace(/^\/api/, ''),
},

Docker

The Docker image uses Nginx to proxy the API. If you deploy your Supamode instance using the provided Docker image, this is already configured for you.

Nginx

We provide a simple Nginx configuration file in the apps/api/nginx.conf.template file. You can use it to proxy the API to your preferred platform.

It is used by default when using Supamode's Docker image.

Vercel

If you deploy your Supamode frontend to Vercel, you can proxy the API to your Supamode backend using Vercel's proxy feature.

Netlify

If you use Netlify to deploy your Supamode frontend, you can proxy the API to your Supamode backend using Netlify's proxy feature.

Railway

Railway uses Docker to deploy the Supamode backend. If you deploy your Supamode backend to Railway, this is already configured for you. For more information, please check out the Railway documentation.