Simmerbox

Self-hosted recipe management web app. Store recipes, plan weekly meals, generate grocery lists, and share everything within your household.

Features

• Recipes - Full CRUD with image upload, categories, tags, ingredients, and preparation steps
• JSON Import - Import recipes via structured JSON
• Meal Planning - Assign one recipe per day, weekly navigation, print view
• Grocery Lists - Auto-generated from meal plan, manual entries, checkbox UI
• Recurring Groceries - NLP-based input in German (e.g. "woechentlich am Montag", "alle 2 Wochen")
• Full-Text Search - SQLite FTS5 with BM25 ranking and category/tag filters
• Household System - Share data via invite code or email invitation
• Realtime Sync - Live updates via WebSockets (Laravel Reverb)
• Admin Panel - Settings, user management, categories
• Permissions - Configurable (everyone / household / owner)
• Dark Mode - Toggle with browser persistence
• Print Views - Print-CSS for meal plan and grocery lists
• German UI - Entire interface in German

Tech Stack

• Backend: Laravel 11 + PHP 8.2+
• Database: SQLite
• Frontend: Blade + Tailwind CSS + Alpine.js
• Auth: Laravel Breeze
• Realtime: Laravel Reverb (WebSockets)
• Images: Intervention Image v3 (GD driver)
• Deployment: Docker / Coolify

Local Setup

git clone https://github.com/roberteinsle/simmerbox.git
cd simmerbox

composer install
npm install && npm run build

cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate

touch database/database.sqlite
php artisan migrate --seed

php artisan storage:link
php artisan search:reindex

php artisan serve

The app is available at http://localhost:8000.

To make the first registered user an admin:

php artisan tinker
> App\Models\User::first()->update(['is_admin' => true]);

Docker Setup

git clone https://github.com/roberteinsle/simmerbox.git
cd simmerbox

# Generate app key (one-time)
echo "APP_KEY=base64:$(openssl rand -base64 32)" > .env

docker compose up -d --build

The app runs at http://localhost:8000.

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
APP_KEY	-	Laravel app key (required)
APP_URL	http://localhost:8000	Public URL
APP_PORT	8000	HTTP port
REVERB_PORT	8080	WebSocket port
REVERB_HOST	localhost	WebSocket host

Volumes

• db-data - SQLite database (persistent data)
• storage-data - Uploads (recipe images)

Deploy on Coolify

Simmerbox runs as a single Docker container on Coolify (self-hosted PaaS).

1. Create Resource

1. In Coolify, go to your project and click + Add Resource
2. Select Docker > Dockerfile
3. Connect your Git repository: https://github.com/roberteinsle/simmerbox
4. Branch: main
5. Coolify will auto-detect the Dockerfile

2. Configure Volumes (CRITICAL)

Under Storages, add two persistent volumes:

Container Path	Purpose
/var/www/html/database	SQLite database - all your data lives here
/var/www/html/storage/app	Uploaded images and media

WARNING: Without persistent volumes, ALL DATA IS LOST on every redeploy! The database is automatically backed up before each migration (last 5 backups kept).

3. Set Environment Variables

Under Environment Variables, configure:

APP_NAME=Simmerbox
APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false
APP_KEY=base64:...
APP_URL=http://your-server-ip:port
APP_TIMEZONE=Europe/Berlin
DB_CONNECTION=sqlite
DB_DATABASE=/var/www/html/database/database.sqlite
BROADCAST_CONNECTION=log
SESSION_DRIVER=database
QUEUE_CONNECTION=database
CACHE_STORE=database
LOG_LEVEL=warning

Generate APP_KEY locally: php artisan key:generate --show Or: echo "base64:$(openssl rand -base64 32)"

4. Network / Ports

• Set the exposed port to 80
• Coolify's built-in proxy (Traefik) handles HTTPS once you assign a domain

5. Deploy

Click Deploy. The build takes ~2 minutes. On first start, the container will:

1. Create the SQLite database
2. Run all migrations
3. Seed default categories and settings

After deployment, register the first user and make them admin via Coolify's terminal:

php /var/www/html/artisan tinker --execute="App\Models\User::first()->update(['is_admin' => true]);"

Enable WebSocket (optional)

To enable realtime sync (grocery list, meal plan), set BROADCAST_CONNECTION=reverb and enable the Reverb supervisor program in docker/supervisord.conf (autostart=true). Expose port 8080 additionally.

Configuration

Most settings can be configured via the Admin Panel (gear icon > Admin area):

• General - App name, description
• Authentication - Open registration or invite-only
• Permissions - Who can view/edit/delete recipes
• Meal Plan - Default portions, week start day
• Upload - Max image size
• Email - Sender configuration

Recurring Groceries

The system understands German recurrence patterns:

Input	Result
Milch, 1L, taeglich	Every day
Brot, 1, woechentlich am Montag	Every Monday
Kaese, 200g, alle 2 Wochen am Freitag	Every 2 weeks on Friday
Waschmittel, 1, monatlich am 1.	1st of every month

Scheduled Commands

For recurring groceries, the Laravel scheduler must be running:

# Crontab (local)
* * * * * cd /path/to/simmerbox && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

In the Docker container, the scheduler runs automatically via Supervisor.

License

MIT