Community Solid Server

An open and modular implementation of the Solid specifications

• Community Solid Server is open software to provide people with their own Solid Pod.

• It will give developers an environment to create and test new Solid applications.

• Its modular architecture allows trying out new ideas on the server side and thereby shape the future of Solid.

Current status

This server is in beta stage, which means you can start using it for developing and testing apps. Your feedback is most welcome as issues on this repository.

However, you can already boot up the server, play around with it, and check how it is made.
The 📗 API documentation and the 📐 architectural diagram can help you find your way.

If you are interested in helping out with the development of this server, be sure to have a look at the 📓 developer notes and 🛠️ good first issues.

Additional recipes for configuring and deploying the server can be found at solid/community-server-recipes.

Running locally

npm ci
npm start

This will start up a server running on port 3000 with a backend storing all data in memory. More configurations with different backends can be found in the config folder.

Interacting with the server

The server supports low-level interaction via HTTP methods, such as GET, PUT, HEAD, ...

Below, we provide several examples on how to interact with the server using curl.

PUT: Creating resources for a given URL

Create a plain text file:

curl -X PUT -H "Content-Type: text/plain" \
  -d "abc" \
  http://localhost:3000/myfile.txt

Create a turtle file:

curl -X PUT -H "Content-Type: text/turtle" \
  -d "<ex:s> <ex:p> <ex:o>." \
  http://localhost:3000/myfile.ttl

POST: Creating resources at a generated URL

Create a plain text file:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: text/plain" \
  -d "abc" \
  http://localhost:3000/

Create a turtle file:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: text/turtle" \
  -d "<ex:s> <ex:p> <ex:o>." \
  http://localhost:3000/

The response's Location header will contain the URL of the created resource.

GET: Retrieving resources

Retrieve a plain text file:

curl -H "Accept: text/plain" \
  http://localhost:3000/myfile.txt

Retrieve a turtle file:

curl -H "Accept: text/turtle" \
  http://localhost:3000/myfile.ttl

Retrieve a turtle file in a different serialization:

curl -H "Accept: application/ld+json" \
  http://localhost:3000/myfile.ttl

DELETE: Deleting resources

curl -X DELETE http://localhost:3000/myfile.txt

PATCH: Modifying resources

Currently, only patches over RDF resources are supported using SPARQL Update queries without WHERE clause.

curl -X PATCH -H "Content-Type: application/sparql-update" \
  -d "INSERT DATA { <ex:s2> <ex:p2> <ex:o2> }" \
  http://localhost:3000/myfile.ttl

HEAD: Retrieve resources headers

curl -I -H "Accept: text/plain" \
  http://localhost:3000/myfile.txt

OPTIONS: Retrieve resources communication options

curl -X OPTIONS -i http://localhost:3000/myfile.txt

Run using Docker

A Docker image is available to run the containerised Solid Community Server against your filesystem.

Common usage:

• Build the Docker image

  docker build --rm -f Dockerfile -t css:latest .

• Run the image against your ~/Solid directory on http://localhost:3000

  docker run --rm -v ~/Solid:/data -p 3000:3000 -it css:latest

• Use alternative versions of the built in config. The filestorage is just the default configuration, you can override with any of the configurations included with the server

  docker run --rm -p 3000:3000 -it css:latest -c config/config-default.json

  Or override it with your own config mapped to the right directory

  docker run --rm -v ~/solid-config:/config -p 3000:3000 -it css:latest -c /config/my-config.json