Publishing data

Datasette includes tools for publishing and deploying your data to the internet. The datasette publish command will deploy a new Datasette instance containing your databases directly to a Heroku, Google Cloud or Zeit Now hosting account. You can also use datasette package to create a Docker image that bundles your databases together with the datasette application that is used to serve them.

datasette publish

Once you have created a SQLite database (e.g. using csvs-to-sqlite) you can deploy it to a hosting account using a single command.

You will need a hosting account with Heroku or Google Cloud. Once you have created your account you will need to install and configure the heroku or gcloud command-line tools.

Publishing to Heroku

To publish your data using Heroku, first create an account there and install and configure the Heroku CLI tool.

You can publish a database to Heroku using the following command:

datasette publish heroku mydatabase.db

This will output some details about the new deployment, including a URL like this one:

https://limitless-reef-88278.herokuapp.com/ deployed to Heroku

You can specify a custom app name by passing -n my-app-name to the publish command. This will also allow you to overwrite an existing app.

$ datasette publish heroku --help

Usage: datasette publish heroku [OPTIONS] [FILES]...

Options:
  -m, --metadata FILENAME         Path to JSON file containing metadata to publish
  --extra-options TEXT            Extra options to pass to datasette serve
  --branch TEXT                   Install datasette from a GitHub branch e.g. master
  --template-dir DIRECTORY        Path to directory containing custom templates
  --plugins-dir DIRECTORY         Path to directory containing custom plugins
  --static STATIC MOUNT           mountpoint:path-to-directory for serving static files
  --install TEXT                  Additional packages (e.g. plugins) to install
  --plugin-secret <TEXT TEXT TEXT>...
                                  Secrets to pass to plugins, e.g. --plugin-secret
                                  datasette-auth-github client_id xxx
  --version-note TEXT             Additional note to show on /-/versions
  --title TEXT                    Title for metadata
  --license TEXT                  License label for metadata
  --license_url TEXT              License URL for metadata
  --source TEXT                   Source label for metadata
  --source_url TEXT               Source URL for metadata
  --about TEXT                    About label for metadata
  --about_url TEXT                About URL for metadata
  -n, --name TEXT                 Application name to use when deploying
  --help                          Show this message and exit.

Publishing to Google Cloud Run

Google Cloud Run launched as a beta in in April 2019. It allows you to publish data in a scale-to-zero environment, so your application will start running when the first request is received and will shut down again when traffic ceases. This means you only pay for time spent serving traffic.

You will first need to install and configure the Google Cloud CLI tools by following these instructions.

You can then publish a database to Google Cloud Run using the following command:

datasette publish cloudrun mydatabase.db --service=my-database

A Cloud Run service is a single hosted application. The service name you specify will be used as part of the Cloud Run URL. If you deploy to a service name that you have used in the past your new deployment will replace the previous one.

If you omit the --service option you will be asked to pick a service name interactively during the deploy.

You may need to interact with prompts from the tool. Once it has finished it will output a URL like this one:

Service [my-service] revision [my-service-00001] has been deployed
and is serving traffic at https://my-service-j7hipcg4aq-uc.a.run.app
$ datasette publish cloudrun --help

Usage: datasette publish cloudrun [OPTIONS] [FILES]...

Options:
  -m, --metadata FILENAME         Path to JSON file containing metadata to publish
  --extra-options TEXT            Extra options to pass to datasette serve
  --branch TEXT                   Install datasette from a GitHub branch e.g. master
  --template-dir DIRECTORY        Path to directory containing custom templates
  --plugins-dir DIRECTORY         Path to directory containing custom plugins
  --static STATIC MOUNT           mountpoint:path-to-directory for serving static files
  --install TEXT                  Additional packages (e.g. plugins) to install
  --plugin-secret <TEXT TEXT TEXT>...
                                  Secrets to pass to plugins, e.g. --plugin-secret
                                  datasette-auth-github client_id xxx
  --version-note TEXT             Additional note to show on /-/versions
  --title TEXT                    Title for metadata
  --license TEXT                  License label for metadata
  --license_url TEXT              License URL for metadata
  --source TEXT                   Source label for metadata
  --source_url TEXT               Source URL for metadata
  --about TEXT                    About label for metadata
  --about_url TEXT                About URL for metadata
  -n, --name TEXT                 Application name to use when building
  --service TEXT                  Cloud Run service to deploy (or over-write)
  --spatialite                    Enable SpatialLite extension
  --show-files                    Output the generated Dockerfile and metadata.json
  --help                          Show this message and exit.

Publishing to Zeit Now v1

Datasette can be deployed to Zeit Now’s older v1 hosting platform. They no longer accept new signups for this service, so this option is currently only available if you created an account before January 2019.

To publish your database(s) to a new instance hosted by Zeit Now v1, install the now cli tool and then run the following command:

datasette publish nowv1 mydatabase.db

This will upload your database to Zeit Now, assign you a new URL and install and start a new instance of Datasette to serve your database.

The command will output a URL that looks something like this:

https://datasette-elkksjmyfj.now.sh

You can navigate to this URL to see live logs of the deployment process. Your new Datasette instance will be available at that URL.

Once the deployment has completed, you can assign a custom URL to your instance using the now alias command:

now alias https://datasette-elkksjmyfj.now.sh datasette-publish-demo.now.sh

You can use anything-you-like.now.sh, provided no one else has already registered that alias.

You can also use custom domains, if you first register them with Zeit Now.

$ datasette publish nowv1 --help

Usage: datasette publish nowv1 [OPTIONS] [FILES]...

Options:
  -m, --metadata FILENAME         Path to JSON file containing metadata to publish
  --extra-options TEXT            Extra options to pass to datasette serve
  --branch TEXT                   Install datasette from a GitHub branch e.g. master
  --template-dir DIRECTORY        Path to directory containing custom templates
  --plugins-dir DIRECTORY         Path to directory containing custom plugins
  --static STATIC MOUNT           mountpoint:path-to-directory for serving static files
  --install TEXT                  Additional packages (e.g. plugins) to install
  --plugin-secret <TEXT TEXT TEXT>...
                                  Secrets to pass to plugins, e.g. --plugin-secret
                                  datasette-auth-github client_id xxx
  --version-note TEXT             Additional note to show on /-/versions
  --title TEXT                    Title for metadata
  --license TEXT                  License label for metadata
  --license_url TEXT              License URL for metadata
  --source TEXT                   Source label for metadata
  --source_url TEXT               Source URL for metadata
  --about TEXT                    About label for metadata
  --about_url TEXT                About URL for metadata
  -n, --name TEXT                 Application name to use when deploying
  --force                         Pass --force option to now
  --token TEXT                    Auth token to use for deploy
  --alias TEXT                    Desired alias e.g. yoursite.now.sh
  --spatialite                    Enable SpatialLite extension
  --show-files                    Output the generated Dockerfile and metadata.json
  --help                          Show this message and exit.

Custom metadata and plugins

datasette publish accepts a number of additional options which can be used to further customize your Datasette instance.

You can define your own Metadata and deploy that with your instance like so:

datasette publish cloudrun --service=my-service mydatabase.db -m metadata.json

If you just want to set the title, license or source information you can do that directly using extra options to datasette publish:

datasette publish cloudrun mydatabase.db --service=my-service \
    --title="Title of my database" \
    --source="Where the data originated" \
    --source_url="http://www.example.com/"

You can also specify plugins you would like to install. For example, if you want to include the datasette-vega visualization plugin you can use the following:

datasette publish cloudrun mydatabase.db --service=my-service --install=datasette-vega

If a plugin has any Secret configuration values you can use the --plugin-secret option to set those secrets at publish time. For example, using Heroku with datasette-auth-github you might run the following command:

$ datasette publish heroku my_database.db \
    --name my-heroku-app-demo \
    --install=datasette-auth-github \
    --plugin-secret datasette-auth-github client_id your_client_id \
    --plugin-secret datasette-auth-github client_secret your_client_secret

datasette package

If you have docker installed (e.g. using Docker for Mac) you can use the datasette package command to create a new Docker image in your local repository containing the datasette app bundled together with your selected SQLite databases:

datasette package mydatabase.db

Here’s example output for the package command:

$ datasette package parlgov.db --extra-options="--config sql_time_limit_ms:2500"
Sending build context to Docker daemon  4.459MB
Step 1/7 : FROM python:3
 ---> 79e1dc9af1c1
Step 2/7 : COPY . /app
 ---> Using cache
 ---> cd4ec67de656
Step 3/7 : WORKDIR /app
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 139699e91621
Step 4/7 : RUN pip install datasette
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 340efa82bfd7
Step 5/7 : RUN datasette inspect parlgov.db --inspect-file inspect-data.json
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 5fddbe990314
Step 6/7 : EXPOSE 8001
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 8e83844b0fed
Step 7/7 : CMD datasette serve parlgov.db --port 8001 --inspect-file inspect-data.json --config sql_time_limit_ms:2500
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 1bd380ea8af3
Successfully built 1bd380ea8af3

You can now run the resulting container like so:

docker run -p 8081:8001 1bd380ea8af3

This exposes port 8001 inside the container as port 8081 on your host machine, so you can access the application at http://localhost:8081/

A full list of options can be seen by running datasette package --help:

$ datasette package --help

Usage: datasette package [OPTIONS] FILES...

  Package specified SQLite files into a new datasette Docker container

Options:
  -t, --tag TEXT            Name for the resulting Docker container, can optionally use
                            name:tag format
  -m, --metadata FILENAME   Path to JSON file containing metadata to publish
  --extra-options TEXT      Extra options to pass to datasette serve
  --branch TEXT             Install datasette from a GitHub branch e.g. master
  --template-dir DIRECTORY  Path to directory containing custom templates
  --plugins-dir DIRECTORY   Path to directory containing custom plugins
  --static STATIC MOUNT     mountpoint:path-to-directory for serving static files
  --install TEXT            Additional packages (e.g. plugins) to install
  --spatialite              Enable SpatialLite extension
  --version-note TEXT       Additional note to show on /-/versions
  --title TEXT              Title for metadata
  --license TEXT            License label for metadata
  --license_url TEXT        License URL for metadata
  --source TEXT             Source label for metadata
  --source_url TEXT         Source URL for metadata
  --about TEXT              About label for metadata
  --about_url TEXT          About URL for metadata
  --help                    Show this message and exit.