Using the Services Stack

Service	Typical Use‑Case	Endpoint Example
PlantDB	Store plant image metadata, query experimental data.	http://plantimager.local/plantdb/scan/dataset_123
P3DX	View a plant in 3D, interact with the scene.	http://plantimager.local/p3dx
P3DV	Run 3D reconstruction, view terminal sessions.	http://plantimager.local/p3dv
WebUI	Manage experiments, view real‑time imaging pipelines.	http://plantimager.local/webui

Development Deployment

Set up a local DNS

To route requests through a "fake" domain name for development purposes (in order to mimic the production setup), you can set up a local DNS on your machine (host) as follows:

1. Pick a "fake" domain (e.g. plantimager.local).
2. Add an entry to /etc/hosts that points that domain to 127.0.0.1.
3. Tell Docker‑Compose to use the same host name by setting SERVER_HOST in the .env file (or via the environment section).
4. Make sure the plantimager_nginx image is built with that host name (SERVER_HOST is passed as a Docker build arg).

Set up a local DNS server

If you want to avoid editing /etc/hosts and want a more scalable solution (e.g. for multiple machines), you need to set up a DNS server.

1. Install and configure dnsmasq:

   sudo apt-get install dnsmasq           # Debian/Ubuntu
   # or
   brew install dnsmasq                   # macOS
   

2. Create a configuration snippet:

   # /etc/dnsmasq.d/dev.local
   address=/dev.mellitus.local/127.0.0.1
   

3. Restart dnsmasq:

   sudo systemctl restart dnsmasq
   

Now any machine on the same network that uses the local DNS server will resolve dev.mellitus.local to 127.0.0.1.

Production Deployment

1. Switch to the production network
   In docker-compose.yml set plantimager-net to external: true and create the network beforehand:

   shell script docker network create plantimager-net

2. Use a real SSL certificate – Replace the ssl_cert volume with a persistent cert volume mounted to /etc/nginx/ssl/.

3. Persist data – Mount a real database volume for plantdb (romi_db) and for P3DV (p3dv_cfg, webterm_users).

4. Disable development ports – Remove or comment out the ports: entries for plantdb, webui, etc.

5. Deploy –

   shell script docker compose -f docker-compose.yml up -d

The stack will now be reachable from the internet over HTTPS, with all services properly isolated on the plantimager-net.

Summary

• NGINX is the traffic controller that forwards requests based on URL prefixes.
• PlantDB, P3DX, P3DV, and WebUI each run inside their own containers and expose their own WSGI/HTTP interfaces.
• Docker volumes keep data and certificates persistent, while the internal network (plantimager-net) allows name‑based service discovery.
• The .env file holds all host/port/prefix settings that keep the configuration consistent across all services.