Sync service

The Electric sync service is an Elixir application that manages active-active replication between your Postgres database and your local apps.

You can run the pre-packaged Docker images published on Docker Hub, or build and run your own Docker image, or run it directly as an Elixir service.

Configuration

The Electric sync service is configured using environment variables. The two required variables are:

• DATABASE_URL in the format of a Postgres Connection URI
• LOGICAL_PUBLISHER_HOST that the sync service is running on (must be accessible from the Postgres instance to establish an inbound replication subscription)

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://user:password@localhost:5432/electric"
LOGICAL_PUBLISHER_HOST="localhost"

See API -> Sync service for the full list of configuration options.

Docker

Images

Pre-packaged images are available on Docker Hub at electricsql/electric. Run using e.g.:

docker pull electricsql/electric:latest 
docker run \
    -e "DATABASE_URL=postgresql://..." \
    -e "LOGICAL_PUBLISHER_HOST=..." \
    -e "AUTH_MODE=insecure" \
    -p 5133:5133 \
    -p 5433:5433 \
    electricsql/electric

Compose

You can deploy the sync service together with a Postgres database in a Docker Compose file. For example:

version: '3.1'

services:
  pg:
    image: postgres
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: "pwd"
    ports:
      - 5432:5432
    restart: always
    volumes:
      pg_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  electric:
    image: electricsql/electric
    depends_on:
      - pg
    environment:
      DATABASE_URL: postgresql://postgres:pwd@pg
      LOGICAL_PUBLISHER_HOST: electric
      AUTH_MODE: insecure
    ports:
      - 5133:5133
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - electric_data:/app/data

Build

See the Makefile for more details but e.g.:

docker build -t electric:local-build .

Then run:

docker run \
    -e "DATABASE_URL=postgresql://..." \
    -e "LOGICAL_PUBLISHER_HOST=..." \
    -e "AUTH_MODE=insecure" \
    -p 5133:5133 \
    -p 5433:5433 \
    -it electric:local-build

Elixir

See the source code and usage instructions at electric-sql/electric/components/electric.

Make sure you have Elixir 1.15 compiled with Erlang 25 installed.

Build:

mix deps.get
mix compile

Test:

mix test

Release:

MIX_ENV="prod" mix release

Run:

./_build/prod/rel/electric/bin/electric start