In addition to using the public notify.run server, it is possible to host your own.

Install the Python package notify-run-server:

pip install notify-run-server

Then, to run a local instance:

notify-run-server

Once the server is running, you can visit localhost:5000 to access a local version of notify.run. The local instance will only be accessible from the machine it is running on. To make it accessible from other machines on the network, use a WSGI server like gunicorn:

pip install gunicorn
gunicorn notify_run_server:app --bind=0.0.0.0:8000

For Docker, Docker Compose, and Dokku configurations, see the notify-run-deployment repository.

All configuration of notify-run-server is done through setting environment variables.

notify-run-server needs a database backend to store subscription information and notification history. By default, it uses a sqlite database called notify.sqlite in the current working directory. All database access happens through SQLAlchemy, so it is possible to replace sqlite with another supported backend like MySQL or Postgres. Note, however, that not all backends support the JSON field type, which is required by notify-run-server.

To configure the database, set the environment variable NOTIFY_DB_URL to a URI that conforms to SQLAlchemy’s URL schema. The server will create the required tables the first time it connects to the database.

Alternatively, notify-run-server can use Amazon DynamoDB as a backend. This is used for the main production deployment, notify.run. To use this option, create two DynamoDB tables for channels and messages (see serverless.yml for the schema). Then set up the Python boto package with your AWS credentials and set the NOTIFY_DB_URL with the format dynamodb:<message_table_name>:<channel_table_name>.

By default, notify-run-server assumes that it is running at the hostname given in the HTTP request. This breaks if it is running behind a reverse proxy or similar setup. In these cases, you can set the environment variable NOTIFY_WEB_SERVER to the root URL of the server, e.g. https://notify.run/.

The web push protocol used by notify.run uses public key encryption to authenticate subscriptions. notify-run-server includes a built-in key pair that is fine for personal use, but for public instances you should generate your own key pair (e.g. using this tool) and pass them to notify-run-server with the NOTIFY_VAPID_PRIVKEY and NOTIFY_VAPID_PUBKEY environment variables, for the private and public keys, respectively.