add persistence to docker

[mpietruschka]

Hey,

every time I recreated my docker container I had to wait 24 hours until enough data has been collected to return some zimmermann calculation.

Persisting the observations in the containers working directory has been a good start, but didn't help in my case.

I added another environment Variable which is making the user able to define a different directory storing observations.json and geocoderCache.json.

• process.env.PERSISTENCE_LOCATION

Furthermore I extended the Dockerfile. It is preset to use an anonymous volume storing those files. Its mounted into /data.

Regards

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

Adds support for persisting observation and geocoder cache files to a configurable directory in Docker.

• Introduces the PERSISTENCE_LOCATION environment variable to override default storage paths.
• Updates LocalWeatherProvider and Geocoder classes to use PERSISTENCE_LOCATION for their JSON files.
• Adjusts the Dockerfile to create, own, and mount /data, and set PERSISTENCE_LOCATION by default.

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

File	Description
routes/weatherProviders/local.ts	Added observationsFile property and switched file operations to use the env var.
routes/geocoders/Geocoder.ts	Updated cacheFile path to respect PERSISTENCE_LOCATION or fall back to default.
Dockerfile	Defines PERSISTENCE_LOCATION, prepares /data directory with correct ownership, and declares it as a volume.

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (2)

routes/geocoders/Geocoder.ts:7

• Use path.join or path.resolve for building the cacheFile path to avoid hardcoded separators and improve cross-platform compatibility.

private static cacheFile: string = (process.env.PERSISTENCE_LOCATION || __dirname + "/../../..") + "/geocoderCache.json";

Dockerfile:2

• Update the project’s README or other documentation to explain the new PERSISTENCE_LOCATION environment variable and its effect on file storage.

ENV PERSISTENCE_LOCATION=/data

[Copilot]

Construct file paths using Node’s path.join or path.resolve instead of manual string concatenation to ensure correct cross-platform behavior.

[Copilot]

The fallback path "observations.json" is relative to the current working directory and may not resolve as expected; consider using __dirname or a configured base path for consistency.