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Getting started

Flightlog ships as a single Docker image. If you can run docker compose up, you can run Flightlog.

This page walks you through the minimum needed to get a working instance — one container, one volume, one browser tab.

Before you start

You'll need:

  • Docker (or Docker Desktop) installed on the machine that will host Flightlog
  • An AeroDataBox API key — free tier is plenty for a personal logbook. Grab one in two minutes
  • A JWT secret — used to sign your login session. Generate one with:
openssl rand -base64 32

That's it. No database server to install, no Redis, nothing else. Flightlog keeps everything in a single SQLite file on disk.

1. Create an .env file

Drop the API key and JWT secret into a file called .env:

.env
AERODATABOX_API_KEY=your_rapidapi_key_here
AUTH_JWT_SECRET=paste_the_openssl_output_here

A couple of optional knobs you can add — see Configuration for the full list:

LOG_LEVEL=info          # debug | info | warn | error
SERVER_PORT=8080        # port Flightlog listens on

2. Create docker-compose.yml

docker-compose.yml
services:
  flightlog:
    image: ghcr.io/thulasirajkomminar/flightlog:latest
    env_file: .env
    ports:
      - 8080:8080
    volumes:
      - flightlog_data:/app/data
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  flightlog_data:

The flightlog_data volume holds the SQLite database — back this up and your entire history is portable.

3. Start it up

docker compose up -d

Open http://localhost:8080, create an account, and you're in.

First account is yours

The first time you visit, you'll land on the sign-in screen. Click Sign up to register your account — there's no extra "admin user" step.

What's next?