Skip to content

Quick Start

Get TimeNow running locally in under 5 minutes.

Prerequisites

  • Podman ≥ 4.0 or Docker ≥ 24
  • podman-compose or docker compose
  • curl (for testing)

Step 1 — Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/koke1997/timenow.git
cd timenow

Step 2 — Start the Stack

podman-compose up --build

docker compose up --build

The first build downloads Scala/sbt dependencies and compiles the backend. This takes 2–5 minutes on first run; subsequent starts are under 10 seconds.

You should see:

backend_1   | [info] application - Started ApplicationTimer at ...
backend_1   | [info] p.c.s.AkkaHttpServer - Listening for HTTP on /0.0.0.0:8090
frontend_1  | ✓ Ready on http://localhost:3000

Step 3 — Health Check

curl http://localhost:8090/health

Expected response:

{"status":"ok","version":"1.0.0"}

Step 4 — Your First Solar Time Query

curl "http://localhost:8090/solar?lat=51.5074&lng=-0.1278"

Response for London:

{
  "latitude": 51.5074,
  "longitude": -0.1278,
  "utc": "2026-04-14T12:00:00Z",
  "solar_time": "2026-04-14T11:49:23",
  "civil_time": "2026-04-14T13:00:00+01:00",
  "equation_of_time_min": -10.6,
  "civil_solar_offset_min": -10.6,
  "timezone": "Europe/London"
}

The civil_solar_offset_min field shows how many minutes ahead or behind the civil clock runs relative to the Sun.

Step 5 — Explore the API Explorer

Open http://localhost:3000/api-explorer.html in your browser for an interactive UI to try all endpoints.

What's Next?