My notes about PocketBase, an “open-source backend in 1 file.”

My setup

Here's how I run PocketBase on my VPS using Dokploy:

services:
  pocketbase:
    image: ghcr.io/muchobien/pocketbase:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - PB_HOST=0.0.0.0
      - PB_PORT=8090
      - PB_ADMIN_EMAIL=${PB_ADMIN_EMAIL:?"PB_ADMIN_EMAIL missing"}
      - PB_ADMIN_PASSWORD=${PB_ADMIN_PASSWORD:?"PB_ADMIN_PASSWORD missing"}
      - TZ=${TZ:?"TZ missing"}
    expose:
      - 8090
    volumes:
      - pb_data:/pb_data
    healthcheck:
      test:
        [
          'CMD',
          'wget',
          '--no-verbose',
          '--tries=1',
          '--spider',
          'http://localhost:8090/api/health',
        ]
      interval: 30s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 3
      start_period: 30s
volumes:
  pb_data:

(Or use dtinth/pocketbase-dokploy directly as a Git source for a Compose service)

Environment variables generator
PB_ADMIN_EMAIL=admin@localhost
PB_ADMIN_PASSWORD=__PASSWORD__
TZ=__TZ__

Password is randomly generated on each page load; timezone is auto-detected from your browser.

Snippets

Importing PocketBase JS SDK:

import PocketBase from 'pocketbase'
export const pb = new PocketBase('…')

Authenticating as superuser:

await pb
  .collection('_superusers')
  .authWithPassword(process.env.PB_ADMIN_EMAIL!, process.env.PB_ADMIN_PASSWORD!)

Bookmarks