Installing InvoiceNinja on Ubuntu 18.04

Introduction¶

It's been a several years since I really did a lot of freelance work. Mostly, I did it in the evening hours a few nights a week for some extra money. Over the last few years, that kind of work has slowed down for me. Mostly because I enjoy relaxing in the evenings and spending time off of my computer now. It's weird to type that, but "hobby coding" really hasn't had as much appeal to me since I started my current job a few years ago.

I love my job. I love working from home 100% of the time and I love being home when the kids get off the bus, during summer breaks, and when the weather sucks. The one thing this job has done though, is remove my desire to sit in my office after everyone else has gone to bed and just code.

But, that's ok. I've found other hobbies and am really excited about some up coming things I'm trying out. If they work out, I'll be able to combine my coding skills with other hobbies. I'm sure I'll write about it at some point.

I say all of that, because, even though I don't actively take on freelance work any longer, I still have clients that I did work for that will reach out once and a while for help, consultations or a small project. When that happens, I need a way to bill them for my time.

Previously, my invoices would have been whipped up in Word and converted to a PDF and sent off to the client. It worked for years. I was able to keep track of everything, properly report it (don't want to mess with the tax man) and I kept chugging along. The problem now, is that if I'm doing work for a client, I want to do the work and be done. I don't want to spent time making a presentable invoice in Word.

So, I went hunting for some software. I found InvoiceNinja. It's amazing.

• Hosted or self hosted version
• Create simple invoices
• Create full quotes
• API (which I will probably never use, but...it's there)
• Recurring billing
• Zapier integration

I have this habit of self hosting my own software. See my posts on NextCloud and GitLab for other examples.

This rest of this post is going to walk through how I installed InvoiceNinja.

Getting Started¶

I'll be self hosting InvoiceNinja. You can find that on their .org site or on GitHub.

In this, I'll be installing InvoiceNinja, setting up Apache to host it, and showing how to update it in the future.

$ wget https://download.invoiceninja.com/ninja-v4.5.13.zip
$ unzip ninja-v4.5.13.zip

This downloads and unzips InvoiceNinja 4.5.14 to the current directory. Next, let's move it to it's final install location and set up appropriate owner and permissions.

$ sudo mv ninja /var/www/html
$ cd /var/www/html
$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data ninja/
$ sudo chmod -R 755 ninja/storage

Database setup¶

InvoiceNinja runs on MySQL (or MariaDB). We need to create the database, but the installer will do the rest of the work for us. Log into MySQL with a user that can create new databases, users and permissions.

$ mysql -u root -p

Now we'll run three commands. The first is to create the new database, the second is to create the user. The third is to set appropriate permissions for the new user and new password.

Our three commands:

CREATE DATABASE ninja;
CREATE USER 'ninja'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'ninja';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON ninja.* TO 'ninja'@'localhost';

Exit MySQL.

Configure Apache¶

Now we're going to set up a new virtualhost in Apache to serve InvoiceNinja.

Create an entry in sites-available.

nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/invoiceninja.conf

My entry looks like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
     DocumentRoot /var/www/html/ninja/public
     ServerName invoice.example.com
     Redirect permanent / https://invoice.example.com/

     <Directory /var/www/html/ninja/public>
        Options +FollowSymlinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
     </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>
    ServerName invoice.example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/ninja/public
    SSLEngine on
    SSLCertificateFile /path/to/dehydrated/certs/invoice.example.com/cert.pem
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /path/to/dehydrated/certs/invoice.example.com/privkey.pem
    SSLCertificateChainFile /path/to/dehydrated/certs/invoice.example.com/chain.pem
    <IfModule mod_headers.c>
        Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15552000; includeSubDomains"
    </IfModule>

    <Directory /var/www/html/ninja/>
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

This sets up a direct from HTTP to HTTPS. Then it points to the SSL certificates I've created for this subdomain. I previously wrote about how I set up SSL. I followed the same steps, using the new subdomain.

With SSL and the subdomain set up in CloudFlare, it's time to enable the site:

$ sudo a2ensite invoiceninja.conf
$ sudo systemctl reload apache2

Completing the install¶

Navigate to the new subdomain, and fill out the form. Installation will be completed in a minute or so.

Updating¶

At some point, InvoiceNinja will come out with an update, and I'll want to update to get the newest features and security patches.

To start with, we want to download the newest version:

$ wget https://download.invoiceninja.com/ninja-v4.5.14.zip
$ unzip ninja-v4.5.14.zip

Next, rsync the files to the installed directory.

$ sudo rsync -tr ninja/ /var/www/html/ninja/

This messes up permissions, so reset those.

$ cd /var/www/html
$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data ninja/
$ sudo chmod -R 755 ninja/storage

Finally, hit the /update URL to complete the process

wget https://invoice.example.com/update