Hot Updater - Self-hosted OTA updates for React Native

Overview

This guide shows how to use S3 for both metadata storage (database) and bundle storage. This approach eliminates the need for a traditional SQL database by storing metadata as JSON files in S3.

This method also works with S3-compatible services like Cloudflare R2, MinIO, and DigitalOcean Spaces.

Prerequisites

AWS account with S3 access
S3 bucket for metadata and bundles
(Optional) CloudFront distribution for CDN

Installation

Install required dependencies.

npm install @hot-updater/server @hot-updater/aws hono

npm install -D tsx typescript @types/node

Hot Updater Configuration

Create the Hot Updater instance with S3 database and storage.

src/hotUpdater.ts

import { s3Database, s3Storage } from "@hot-updater/aws";
import { createHotUpdater } from "@hot-updater/server";

export const hotUpdater = createHotUpdater({
  database: s3Database({
    region: process.env.AWS_REGION!,
    credentials: {
      accessKeyId: process.env.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID!,
      secretAccessKey: process.env.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY!,
    },
    bucketName: process.env.AWS_S3_BUCKET_NAME!,
  }),
  storages: [
    s3Storage({
      region: process.env.AWS_REGION!,
      credentials: {
        accessKeyId: process.env.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID!,
        secretAccessKey: process.env.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY!,
      },
      bucketName: process.env.AWS_S3_BUCKET_NAME!,
    }),
  ],
  basePath: "/hot-updater",
});

Server Setup

Create the server entry point.

src/index.ts

import { Hono } from "hono";
import { cors } from "hono/cors";
import { hotUpdater } from "./hotUpdater";

const app = new Hono();

app.use("*", cors());

app.get("/", (c) => {
  return c.json({ status: "ok" });
});

app.on(["POST", "GET", "DELETE"], "/hot-updater/*", async (c) => {
  return hotUpdater.handler(c.req.raw);
});

export default app;

Environment Variables

Create .env file with your AWS credentials.

AWS_REGION=us-east-1
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your-access-key
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your-secret-key
AWS_S3_BUCKET_NAME=hot-updater-metadata

CLI Configuration

Configure your CLI to use this server.

hot-updater.config.ts

import { defineConfig } from "hot-updater";
import { bare } from "@hot-updater/bare";
import { s3Storage } from "@hot-updater/aws";
import { standaloneRepository } from "@hot-updater/standalone";

export default defineConfig({
  build: bare(),
  storage: s3Storage({
    region: process.env.AWS_REGION!,
    credentials: {
      accessKeyId: process.env.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID!,
      secretAccessKey: process.env.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY!,
    },
    bucketName: process.env.AWS_S3_BUCKET_NAME!,
  }),
  database: standaloneRepository({
    baseUrl: "http://localhost:3000/hot-updater",
  }),
});

The storage plugin must match the storages in your server's createHotUpdater.

S3