Prerequisites

Hoppscotch is a self-hosted API development platform, packaged as a set of Docker containers. You can install and run Hoppscotch on any operating system that can run a Docker Engine. You can use Hoppscotch on your local machine or a cloud provider of your choice.

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System Requirements

Hoppscotch is designed to run well on both small and large deployments. The minimum requirements to run Hoppscotch are an operating system that supports Docker and 4 CPU cores + 4GB of RAM to generate the build image and as little as 1 CPU core + 2GB of RAM to host the generated output files.

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Install Node.js, npm, pnpm

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Node.js + npm

Install Node.js (v18+) and npm (v9+).

• Node.js + npm installation guide

Verify Node.js and npm installation by running the following commands in your terminal:

node -v

npm -v

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pnpm

Install pnpm (v6+).

• pnpm installation guide

Verify pnpm installation by running the following command in your terminal:

pnpm -v

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Docker

Install Docker (v20+).

• Docker installation guide

Verify Docker installation by running the following command in your terminal:

docker -v

It is recommended to use Compose V2. To switch to Compose V2, use the docker compose CLI plugin or activate the Use Docker Compose V2 setting in Docker Desktop. For more information, see the Evolution of Compose.

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Git

Install Git (v2+).

• Git installation guide

Verify Git installation by running the following command in your terminal:

git --version

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Email delivery

Hoppscotch comes with support for easy integrations with 3rd party SMTP providers. You will need emails so that you can invite your team to use Hoppscotch and for emails to work, you will need to set up proper SMTP configuration as described below.

To enable email delivery, you will need to generate a valid SMTP URL in the below format:

smtps://user@domain.com:pass@smtp.domain.com

For example, if you are using Gmail as your SMTP server your SMTP URL will look like something shown below:

smtps://user@gmail.com:pass@smtp.gmail.com

You can also use mailcatcher as a simple SMTP server.

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Custom SMTP configuration

For more advanced needs, such as production-level email delivery or gaining more control over your email configurations, you can set up a custom SMTP server.

To enable the custom mailer configuration, in addition to setting the MAILER_USE_CUSTOM_CONFIGS to true, you’ll also need the following details in the specified format:

You can use services like SendGrid, Amazon SES, or your own SMTP server to set up custom email delivery with Hoppscotch.

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Postgres database

Hoppscotch uses a Postgres database to store all the data. You can use any Postgres database provider of your choice - hosted locally or on a cloud provider. Make sure you have a valid Postgres database URL in the below format:

postgresql://username:password@url:5432/dbname

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OAuth

You also need to configure an OAuth provider to enable third-party authentication. Hoppscotch supports the following OAuth providers:

1. Email
2. GitHub
3. Google
4. Microsoft

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Choosing OAuth Providers

Hoppscotch provides you with the ability to choose which authentication providers you want to use in the app. You can do this by specifying the required providers in the environment variable

VITE_ALLOWED_AUTH_PROVIDERS=GOOGLE,GITHUB,MICROSOFT,EMAIL

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Configuring third-party providers

To configure the third-party authentication, you will need to generate a valid OAuth client ID and client secret for the OAuth provider of your choice. You will also need to provide a valid callback URL for the OAuth provider.

For example, if you are using GitHub as your OAuth provider, you will need to generate a valid OAuth client ID and client secret for GitHub. You will also need to provide a valid callback URL for GitHub. The environment variables for the GitHub OAuth provider will look like something shown below:

GITHUB_CLIENT_ID=*****
GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET=*****
GITHUB_CALLBACK_URL=http://localhost:3170/v1/auth/github/callback
GITHUB_SCOPE=user:email

The CALLBACK_URL variable is the URL that is invoked after the authorization is done and it follows the pattern http://localhost:3170/v1/auth/[auth_provider_name]/callback.

The SCOPE variable defines the scope of the data that the OAuth provider passes on to Hoppscotch.

The links to configure OAuth for various providers are given below:

1. GitHub (scope: email)
2. Google (scope: email, profile)
3. Microsoft (scope: user with read permission)

• It is recommended that you secure your deployments by issuing TLS certificates and using HTTPS since we use secure HTTP cookies for authenticating users.

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Support for standard HTTP/s ports

From the December 2023 release onwards containers now support ingress via standard HTTP/S ports on port 80 and 443 by default, moving forward it is recommended users switch to using these ports. We currently do still support the services being exposed from ports 3000, 3100 and 3170 respectively but support for this will be dropped in the future and all containers will work over standard HTTP/s ports.