IPEXCO - Iterative Planning Tool with Explanations of Conflicts - BACK END

Docker Image

Unless you want to change/update the backend service, we suggest running the planner in a docker container. We provide a pre-build docker image on DockerHub: eifler/ipexco-backend

If you want to build your own docker image tun

docker build -t ipexco-backend .

Setup

Note Make sure that the submodule utils is initialized and updated!

Dependencies

The dependencies are:

• npm (https://www.npmjs.com/)
• node.js version 22 (https://nodejs.org/en)

Before first run install npm packages with:

npm install

Environment

The back-end requires the following environment variables to run:

• PORT the port the web server should be listening on (default 3000)
• BASE_URL the URL the backend is reachable on. It is used to compose the callback URL for the services. http://localhost:3000 should work for a local setup. On MacOS there might be some changes necessary since the network sharing between the host and docker containers is different from Linux.
• MONGO the URL of the mongoDB database. In a local setup mongodb://localhost:27017/ipexco should work.
• JWT_KEY: a random string that is used to generate the login tokens to authenticate users
• SERVICE_KEY: a random string that is used to authenticate any registered services, e.g. planner
• PDDLPARSER=utils/pddl_parser/ the past to the in the utils submodule contained PDDL parser
• UPLOADPATH a path to a local folder in with the uploaded images can be stored

Optional environment variables:

• ALLOW_REGISTRATION set to true allows new users to register (default false)
• ALLOW_USER_STUDY_USERS set to true allows users to participate in a user study
• OPENAI_API_KEY: the API key for the OpenAI service. It is mandatory to set this variable with your own valid key if you want to use the LLM interfaces. These keys are generated from the Open AI Platform (https://platform.openai.com/api-keys).

Run

npm start

Platform Usage

For instruction on how to use the platform we refer to the README of the front-end repository.