figmaid in Docker
You can also run figmaid inside a container. This comes with obvious benefits such as Docker's restart policies, which let you delegate restarting figmaid to Docker so you don't have to. The minor caveat is that specifying additional directories is more of a chore and the container includes an operating system, adding roughly 50MB.
Nevertheless, the benefits overshadow the caveats here for most people. Let's see it!
docker run -d -p 18412:18412 \
-v /usr/share/fonts:/usr/share/fonts:ro \
-v ~/.config/figmaid/figmaid.json:/root/.config/figmaid/figmaid.json \
--name figmaid --restart always \
nykanen/figmaid
Step by step — what is the above telling Docker? First, the -d short flag starts the container in detached mode, meaning there's no shell output nor input. Secondly, you must bind the port 18412 to your local computer, this is done with the -p short flag. Otherwise figmaid will only be accessible from within the container which is not very useful.
The -v short flag stands for volume, and as you'd expect, it binds a directory from your computer to be accessible within the container. Again, this is a requirement in almost all cases, unless you intend to install fonts inside the container, which by any means you could do. Above, we expose two directories: the directory for installed fonts in Ubuntu / Fedora, and the configuration file. The short :ro option enforces that figmaid doesn't have access to write to those files — completely optional as figmaid only reads those files, but explicitness is great!
That's the gist of it, but take the time to understand the arguments. Before running the command blindly it is probably beneficial to lay out a plan so figmaid works for you in the future with minimal hassle. These docs will still be waiting for you if you need to change stuff later.
After succesfully configuring and starting figmaid, the output of docker container ls would be similar to below:
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS
c07e070bb470 nykanen/figmaid "sh -c 'HOST=${HOST}…" 0 days ago Up 0 hours 0.0.0.0:18412->18412/tcp, :::18412->18412/tcp
Take note of the PORTS value. 0.0.0.0:18412 is available from 18412/tcp on your local machine. To make sure that everything really went as expected, open http://localhost:18412/figma/font-files on a browser and you should get a big chunk of JSON.
Adding additional directories
Simply changing your configuration file is not enough, you must bind the directory from your host to the container. If you find you're adding a lot of directories, you can use figmaid's ability to walk directories. If you have fonts in $HOME/design/fonts and $HOME/Downloads specifying just $HOME might be the way to go. This is not free though — figmaid would walk all directories in $HOME — so pick a good middleground, unfortunately this is up to you to figure out.
To add new bind mounts to figmaid you must first delete the first iteration, e.g. docker rm -f figmaid then create a new container with the additional bind mount:
docker run -d -p 18412:18412 \
-v /usr/share/fonts:/usr/share/fonts:ro \
-v ~/Downloads:/root/Downloads:ro \
-v ~/.config/figmaid/figmaid.json:/root/.config/figmaid/figmaid.json:rw \
--name figmaid --restart always \
nykanen/figmaid
Above we bound the default directory for downloaded files on Ubuntu to /root/Downloads. Remember to add this directory to your configuration file by editing ~/.config/figmaid/figmaid.json and add the directory for what the directory path is inside the container. In this case our configuration file would contain the following directories: /usr/share/fonts and /root/Downloads.
Verify that directories are included
After adding directories it would be nice to know they actually are picked up by figmaid. Fortunately this is not that big of a checklist, and often you would do this only once, never having to think about it again.
To get a list of all mounts inside a container use
docker inspect figmaid --format "{{range .Mounts}}{{ .Source }} -> {{ .Destination }}
{{ end }}"
You should get an output similar to below:
/usr/share/fonts -> /usr/share/fonts
/home/$user/.config/figmaid/figmaid.json -> /root/.config/figmaid/figmaid.json
The left-hand side is the directory on your host machine. This would contain your configuration file and font directories. The right-hand side is what the path is inside the container. Therefore it's also the path you should have in your configuration file.
Let's verify this next. Open your configuration file on your host machine (whatever is on the left-hand side of -> /root/.config/figmaid/figmaid.json.) As introduced in configuration, the directories property lets you specify additional directories. In the above example we want to include the right-hand side of /usr/share/fonts, which just happens to be /usr/share/fonts, but it could be anything! After ensuring that you're using the correct directories, and checking that the configuration is valid (docker exec -it figmaid figmaid config validate), all there is left to do is refresh Figma, if open. You can also run docker exec -it figmaid figmaid config to list loaded directories.