Why a dockerized installation?

To create a complete REDCap System you need to install, initialize and configure many subsystems. This Dockerized installation deliveres a complete fresh REDCap instance with only a few commands. You can use this for easily testing REDCap without the challenging installation process.

Note: This is not a offical REDCap Repository. Its a community based project. You need the offical REDCap permissions and source files to run REDCap. This repository contains no source files from REDCap.

What is REDCap?

REDCap is a secure web application for building and managing online surveys and databases. While REDCap can be used to collect virtually any type of data in any environment, it is specifically geared to support online and offline data capture for research studies and operations. Please visit the offical Website for more information.

Already implemented features

• complete Webservice installation
• complete Database installation
• permission handling
• initial REDCap configuration
• SSL out of the box

Project structure

In the folder Webservice are all components for building the Webapplication. The Web-Dockerfile is based on the official php docker container with a apache2 integration. The script folder contains all scripts for the automated installation. In the src folder you have to insert the offical REDCap source files as a .zip package. For the SSL configuration you need the ssl folder. Your own key and the associated certificate must be inserted in the subfolders.

The folder MariaDB contains all components for building the database. The DB-Dockerfile is based on the official MariaDB docker container

The most important file is the .env file which contains all private variables for the REDCap system. These must be set before the start.

Requirements

• The REDCap Source Files:
  REDCap is a closed source project. To get access to the source files you have to request them from official REDCap Website first.

• Docker:
  To start the REDCap docker container, Docker is required on the host system. For the installation follow the official Docker installation.

• Docker-compose:
  In this project we managed the several container throw the docker-compose framework. For the installation follow the official Docker Compose installation

Installation

First, download or clone the repository:

sudo git clone https://github.com/Pfleiderer-Adrian/REDCap-dockerized.git

Next, we need to add redcap's official source files (zipped) to the Webservice/src folder in the repository:

cd path/to/REDCap-dockerized/Webservice/src
sudo cp path/to/sourcefiles/redcapxx.x.x.zip path/to/REDCap-dockerized/Webservice/src

For the SSL configuration we need to add the SSL certificate into the Webservice/ssl folder in the repository. The key must be stored in the key folder and the certificate in the crt folder. If you don't already have an SSL certificate and a key, you can easily create one for development purposes (not production!!). With openssl:

cd /path/to/REDCap-dockerized
sudo openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 356 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout REDCap-dockerized/Webservice/ssl/key/redcap.key -out REDCap-dockerized/Webservice/ssl/crt/redcap.crt

Last step is to edit the .env file and set the nessecery credentials with a text editor.

Value	Description	Change necessary?
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD	The root password for your Database	YES!!!
MYSQL_DATABASE	The database name for REDCap	NO
MYSQL_USER	The database user for the application	NO
MYSQL_PASSWORD	The password for the user	YES!!!
REDCAP_BASE_URL	The url for your application. E.g. https://localhost/redcap for development	YES
REDCAP_VERSION	The version of your source files. Name format: xx.x.x (only digets and dot)	YES
INSTITUTION	Your instition name	NO for development. YES for production
DEPARTMENT	Your department name	NO for development. YES for production
CONTACT_EMAIL	Your admin email	NO for development. YES for production
ADMINISTRATOR_NAME	Your admin name	NO for development. YES for production

NOTE: All values must be set. No empty values allowed.

Finally we can build and execute our image:

cd path/to/REDCap-dockerized
sudo docker-compose up -d --build

After the image are build successfully please wait a minute. After that you can check your URL. You should see a fully working REDCap system. :)

Access a component with a shell

If you want to change something in the webservice docker image you can run:

cd path/to/REDCap-dockerized
sudo docker exec -it redcap-web bash

If you want to change something in the database docker image you can run:

cd path/to/REDCap-dockerized
sudo docker exec -it redcap-db bash

Upcoming Features

• mailing service (currently not working out-of-the-box)

License

MIT

References

This work uses and is based on the great REDCap software. Please look at these papers:

PA Harris, R Taylor, R Thielke, J Payne, N Gonzalez, JG. Conde, Research electronic data capture (REDCap) – A metadata-driven methodology and workflow process for providing translational research informatics support, J Biomed Inform. 2009 Apr;42(2):377-81.

PA Harris, R Taylor, BL Minor, V Elliott, M Fernandez, L O’Neal, L McLeod, G Delacqua, F Delacqua, J Kirby, SN Duda, REDCap Consortium, The REDCap consortium: Building an international community of software partners, J Biomed Inform. 2019 May 9 doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2019.103208