LicenseDb

License as a service provides a convenient and effective way for organizations to manage their use of open-source licenses. With the growing popularity of open-source software, organizations are finding it more difficult to keep track of the various licenses and terms under which they are permitted to use open-source components. Open-source licenses can be complicated, making it difficult to understand how they apply to a specific piece of software or interact with other licenses. It can be used for various purposes by organizations and tools like FOSSology and SW360 like license identification, filtering, and managing licenses. There are benefits of this service such as increasing flexibility, a faster time-to-access, and managing the database.

Database

Licensedb database has licenses, obligations, obligation map, users, their audits and changes.

• license_dbs table has list of licenses and all the data related to the licenses.
• obligations table has the list of obligations that are related to the licenses.
• obligation_maps table that maps obligations to their respective licenses.
• users table has the user that are associated with the licenses.
• audits table has the data of audits that are done in obligations or licenses
• change_logs table has all the change history of a particular audit.

APIs

There are multiple API endpoints for licenses, obligations, user and audit endpoints.

API endpoints

Check the OpenAPI documentation for the API endpoints at cmd/laas/docs/swagger.yaml.

The same can be viewed by Swagger UI plugin after installing and running the tool at http://localhost:8080/swagger/index.html.

Authentication

To get the access token, send a POST request to /api/v1/login with the username and password.

curl -X POST "http://localhost:8080/api/v1/login" \
-H "accept: application/json" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d "{ \"username\": \"<username>\", \"password\": \"<password>\"}"

As the response of the request, a JWT will be returned. Use this JWT with the Authorization header (as -H "Authorization: <JWT>") to access endpoints requiring authentication.

Prerequisite

Before proceeding, make sure you have the following installed on your system:

• Install Golang

Follow the official instructions to install Golang:
👉 https://go.dev/doc/install

---

• Install golang-migrate CLI (For Linux & MacOs)

curl -L https://github.com/golang-migrate/migrate/releases/latest/download/migrate.linux-amd64.tar.gz | tar xvz
sudo mv migrate /usr/local/bin/

How to run this project?

• Clone this Project and Navigate to the folder.

git clone https://github.com/fossology/LicenseDb.git
cd LicenseDb

• Create the external_ref_fields.yaml file in the root directory of the project and change the values of the extra license json keys as per your requirement.

cp external_ref_fields.example.yaml external_ref_fields.yaml
vim external_ref_fields.yaml

• Generate Go struct for the extra fields listed in the external_ref_fields.yaml.

go generate ./...

• Build the project using following command.

go build ./cmd/laas

• Create the .env file in the root directory of the project and change the values of the environment variables as per your requirement.

cp configs/.env.dev.example .env
vim .env

• Run the migration files.

migrate -path pkg/db/migrations -database "postgres://fossy:fossy@localhost:5432/licensedb?sslmode=disable" up

• Run the executable.

./laas

• You can directly run it by the following command.

go run ./cmd/laas

Create first user

Connect to the database using psql with the following command.

psql -h localhost -p 5432 -U fossy -d licensedb

Run the following query to create the first user.

INSERT INTO users (user_name, user_password, user_level, display_name, user_email) VALUES ('<username>', '<password>', 'SUPER_ADMIN', '<display_name>', '<user_email>');

LicenseDB with Docker

LicenseDB is available as a prebuilt Docker image on GitHub Container Registry (GHCR).
You can run it either using a simple docker run command or with the included docker-compose.yml file for a full setup with PostgreSQL.

---

Option 1: Run with Docker directly

# Pull the latest stable release
docker pull ghcr.io/fossology/licensedb:latest

# Run LicenseDB (requires a PostgreSQL instance)
docker run \
  --name licensedb \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -e DB_HOST=<your-postgres-host> \
  -e DB_PORT=5432 \
  -e DB_USER=fossy \
  -e DB_PASSWORD=fossy \
  -e DB_NAME=licensedb \
  ghcr.io/fossology/licensedb:latest

⚠️ This method requires you to have PostgreSQL running separately.
If you’d like an all-in-one setup with PostgreSQL included, use the Docker Compose option below.

---

Option 2: Run with Docker Compose (recommended)

A docker-compose.yml is included in this repository to make it easy to spin up LicenseDB along with PostgreSQL.

# Build and start the containers
docker compose up -d

This will start two services:

• licensedb → The LicenseDB API (exposed at http://localhost:8080)
• postgres → PostgreSQL 16 instance with preconfigured credentials

---

⚙️ Environment Variables

You can customize LicenseDB behavior via environment variables in the docker-compose.yml.

Variable	Default Value	Description
DB_HOST	postgres	Hostname of the PostgreSQL database
DB_PORT	5432	PostgreSQL port
DB_USER	fossy	Database username
DB_PASSWORD	fossy	Database password
DB_NAME	licensedb	Database name
GIN_MODE	debug	Gin mode (debug, release)
DEFAULT_ISSUER	http://localhost:8080	Default issuer for authentication tokens
SIMILARITY_THRESHOLD	0.9	Similarity threshold for license matching
PORT	8080	Port where LicenseDB runs inside the container
TOKEN_HOUR_LIFESPAN	24	Token expiration time in hours
READ_API_AUTHENTICATION_ENABLED	false	Enable/disable authentication for read APIs

---

🔍 Verify the Setup

Once containers are running, you can check:

# List running containers
docker ps

# View logs for LicenseDB
docker logs -f licensedb

Backend should be available at:
👉 http://localhost:8080

Generating Swagger Documentation

1. Install swag using the following command.

   go install github.com/swaggo/swag/cmd/swag@latest

2. Run the following command to generate swagger documentation.

   swag init --parseDependency --generalInfo api.go --dir ./pkg/api,./pkg/auth,./pkg/db,./pkg/models,./pkg/utils --output ./cmd/laas/docs

3. Swagger documentation will be generated in ./cmd/laas/docs folder.
4. Run the project and navigate to http://localhost:8080/swagger/index.html to view the documentation.
5. Optionally, after changing any documentation comments, format them with following command.

   swag fmt --generalInfo ./pkg/api/api.go --dir ./pkg/api,./pkg/auth,./pkg/db,./pkg/models,./pkg/utils

Testing (local)

The PostgreSQL user fossy must have the CREATEDB privilege in order to:

• Programmatically create and drop a test database.
• Apply migrations on the test DB before running tests.

sudo -u postgres psql; // log into psql with postgres super user 
ALTER USER fossy CREATEDB; // alter the role for fossy
\du ;                     // verify role 

Create the .env.test file file in the configs directory of the project.

cp configs/.env.test.example .env.test