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Introduction

OrbitKit is setup as a monorepo, which comes with three applications and many packages, here is the codebase structure: 
apps
├── docs # Documentation website with Mintlify
├── marketing # Marketing website with Astro
└── web # Web application with Next.js
packages
  ├── assets # Shared assets library for example, images, fonts, etc.
  ├── auth # Auth package to handle authentication.
  └── config # Config directory hosts tools config packages.
    ├── eslint # ESLint config package.
    ├── storybook # Storybook config package.
    ├── tailwind # Tailwind preset package.
    ├── tsconfig # TSConfig presets library to configure TypeScript.
    └── vite # Shared vite config.
  ├── core # Empty package for business logic.
  ├── db # Database handling package with Drizzle ORM.
  ├── env # Environment variables validation using t3-env.
  ├── ui # Shadcn UI library with Storybook.
  └── utils # misc utilities.
We will go more in detail about every aspect of orbitkit later on, but this should give you a good idea of what to expect.

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Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have met the following requirements:
  • You have Bun installed on your machine.
That is actually pretty much all you need!

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Installation

With all that being said, we are ready to start using Orbitkit! We firstly need to clone it down to your machine and then we can install dependencies, configure environment variables and run it!
There are three ways to get OrbitKit onto your machine, it all comes down to your choice.
  1. You can use degit to download the code directly and remove the git history.
bunx degit ixahmedxi/orbitkit
  1. You can fork OrbitKit and then clone down your version of it.
# After forking the repository
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/<your-username>/orbitkit.git <your-project-name>
  1. You can clone the repository directly.
# Clone the repository
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ixahmedxi/orbitkit.git <your-project-name>
The next step is to install all of the required dependencies for OrbitKit, we use bun as the package manager.
# Navigate to the project directory
cd <your-project-name>

# Install dependencies
bun install

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Configuring environment variables

You will need to set-up some environment variables in a .env.local file in the apps/web directory. We provide an example file in apps/web/.env.example that you can copy over and input the values. 
# Copy the .env.example file into a .env.local file.
cp ./apps/web/.env.example ./apps/web/.env.local

# You will also need to symlink that file into the packages/db directory as a `.env` file.
cd packages/db && ln -s ../../apps/web/.env.local .env
Here is how you can obtain each of the required values:

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Database

The database that OrbitKit uses is Neon PostgreSQL. You should create a free account and input the database url given to you on the dashboard to be the value of the DATABASE_URL environment variable. Make sure that the DATABASE_URL ends with ?sslmode=require.

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Uploadthing

Uploadthing is the service of choice in OrbitKit for file uploads, you should create an account and input the api keys into the .env.local File.

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Unkey (optional)

Unkey is the service of choice in OrbitKit for rate limiting, it is however optional as that if the UNKEY_ROOT_KEY or UNKEY_NAMESPACE variables are not supplied, no rate limiting is applied. To obtain this key, head over to your unkey dashboard and create a new ratelimit namespace, then in your settings, create a new root key, that will be the value of your environment variable. As for the namespace that you have created, you will need to put that as the value of the UNKEY_NAMESPACE environment variable.

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Posthog (optional)

Posthog is the service of choice in OrbitKit for analysis, it is however optional as that if the NEXT_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_HOST or NEXT_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_KEY variables are not supplied for the web app or PUBLIC_POSTHOG_KEY and PUBLIC_POSTHOG_HOST for the marketing app, no analysis is applied. To obtain this key, head over to your posthog dashboard, then in your settings, find Project API Key, that will be the value of the key environment variable. As for the host use app.posthog.com or eu.posthog.com depending on your region.

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OAuth

OrbitKit currently ships with two authentication providers, Google and Github. You will need to create an OAuth application on the respective platforms and input the values into the .env.local file.
Based on the environment variables set, authentication will be provided. For example, setting AUTH_GITHUB_ID and AUTH_GITHUB_SECRET will make it so that Github OAuth is then activated on the web application. The same is true for Google OAuth.
  1. Go to your Github Settings.
  2. Go to Developer Settings.
  3. Go to OAuth Apps.
  4. Click on New OAuth App.
  5. Fill in the details, the homepage url should be http://localhost:3000 and the authorization callback url should be http://localhost:3000/login/github/callback.
  6. Click on Register Application.
  7. Copy the Client ID into the AUTH_GITHUB_ID environment variable.
  8. Click on Generate a new client secret button and copy the client secret into the AUTH_GITHUB_SECRET environment variable.
  1. Go to the Google Cloud Console.
  2. Create a new project.
  3. Configure consent screen.
  4. Create OAuth client ID.
  5. Fill in the details, add http://localhost:3000 in the list of Authorized JavaScript origins and http://localhost:3000/login/google/callback in the list of Authorized redirect URIs.
  6. Copy the Client ID into the AUTH_GOOGLE_ID environment variable.
  7. Copy the Client Secret into the AUTH_GOOGLE_SECRET environment variable.
  8. For the AUTH_SECRET environment variable, you can put any random string.

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Reset changelog and versions

When you first clone the repository, you should reset the changelog and project metadata to start fresh. You can do so by running the following commands: 
# Reset changelog - this will remove all the changelog.md files in the packages
bun reset:changelog

# Update workspace - this will update the workspace with the new metadata
bun update:workspace --namespace "@myapp" --ir
The update:workspace command has the following options: 
-n, --namespace # The namespace of the project (e.g. -n "@myapp")
-v, --ver # The version of the project (e.g. -v 1.0.0)
-a, --author # The author of the project (e.g. -a "Ahmed OrbitKit")
-l, --license # The license of the project (e.g. -l "MIT")
--ir, --include-root # Include the root package (e.g. --ir) - boolean flag - no value needs to be passed
-e, --exclude # Exclude packages (e.g. -e @myapp/core @myapp/db)
Note: If you want to pass special characters or spaces in the author flag, you should wrap the value in two sets of quotes '""' e.g. '"Ahmed Elsakaan - https://orbitkit.dev"'.

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Running the project

Now that you have set up the environment variables, you can run the project! 
bun turbo dev
This command will apply the necessary database migrations and start the development tasks on all of the apps & packages. You should be able to access the web app on http://localhost:3000, the marketing website on http://localhost:4321 and the documentation website on http://localhost:3002. For more info about the commands available to you, you can check out the Commands page.