This is an example setup to run a self-hosted Invoice Ninja instance via Docker
container. The idea is to run everything inside a container and to not expose
any involved services to the public, except for the web interface via a reverse
proxy supporting HTTPS.

As a bonus, the SQL database can be accessed directly via phpmyadmin. This
shouldn’t be necessary, but I have experienced situations where this became
necessary. This interface is also not for public use.

** Caution: Services not intended for public use should NEVER be made available
publicly. **

This multi-container setup requires a running server with
a recent operating system supporting Docker. The containers involved are:

• invoiceninja_web: web-server to provide HTTP
  access to the Invoice Ninja application; it’s interface will be made
  available on localhost only and can be accessed through a reverse proxy
  providing HTTPS. It can be tweaked via its own config file.

• invoiceninja_app: The application’s backend
  container, provided by the Invoice Ninja application. It will store its
  files in a persistent storage and share the public files with the
  web-server container. No ports will be published.

• invoiceninja_db: The official MySQL 8
  Docker container running the database for the instance. It contains the
  data entered through the app’s web interface. The data is stored in a
  persistent mount point.

• invoiceninja_dbadmin: The official
  phpMyAdmin container running a web interface to the database. This
  container is completely optional. Its interface is not made public, but
  available via localhost. We can access it through a temporary forward SSH
  tunnel.

The containers share the same network to be able
to communicate with each other.

The full setup further requires a reverse-proxy configuration for
Apache2 or Nginx, and a systemd system
service to automatically start and restart the
container union.

This software is required:

• docker.io | docker-ce | docker
• optional: docker-compose (one can use docker compose command as well)
• apache2 | nginx-light | nginx

The docker version shipped in most distributions might already be fine. It
definitely is for Debian Bullseye, for example. There is not really a reason to
get the docker CE packages.

If SysVinit is used instead of systemd, then the service file contains every
necessary to write an init script based on it.

Although one can change the docker-compose.yml file,
most configuration takes place in the .env file. There is an example
configuration in the .env.example file.

Let’s go though each item:

• INVOICE_NINJA_HOME: This is used in the docker-compose.yml file to define the local path where the database and the application files should be stored outside the container in a persistent location. The variable in the systemd service file overwrites the variable defined here.

It is intended to not expose the port to access the phpMyAdmin service to the
public. To use it, we can create an SSH forward tunnel from our host to the
server running the container. A forward tunnel is basically a tunnel, that
starts on a local IP and port and forwards all packetsi from there to a remote
IP and port. So, if phpMyAdmin is available on the remote server on localhost
port 8000, we can do:

ssh -N -L localhost:8000:localhost:8000 <remote server>

then we can access phpMyAdmin locally via http://localhost:8000/ as long as
the tunnel exists, and we can view, change, and backup the remote database.

I: The interface shows only a few languages and currencies and misses most
after the first login

Open http://your.domain.tld/update?secret=secret in the browser. Of course
replace the placeholder here by the real domain.

Thanks to
https://forum.invoiceninja.com/t/missing-languages-currencies/12026/3.

I: There is an update available

If we run the systemd service, we just restart the server:

sudo systemctl restart invoiceninja.service

If we run the containers manually, then we basically have to shut the
containers down, pull the updates, and start them again:

docker-compose down
docker-compose pull --include-deps
docker-compose up (-d)