Run npm install in all three folders: Project root, frontend, and backend.
Add a file named .db.env into project root with necessary environment variables.
At this point, do the db-restore things as instructed below.
If you have docker compose installed, run npm run dev in project root to launch docker in development mode.
Check if it worked: The docker logs should have a line saying database connected successfully. Open localhost:5173 in browser to check if frontend works.

Restoring db from dump 💿

Make an empty directory sqlfiles inside data folder which is in the repository root.
Place the database dump files now_test.sql, now_log_test.sql and now_view.sql inside it.
Notice, that the container will have to be able to read these files and execute data/restore_and_create_user.sql, so you may have to adjust the necessary rights depending on your operating system.
Then simply run everything by npm run dev.

How does it work?

The mariadb-container by default executes all .sql files it finds in the containers /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/ directory when the container is run the first time. The data directory is mounted there. It cotnains an initialization file (restore_and_create.sql) which will then restore the database from the sql-dumpfiles in sqlfiles/, and also create a user 'now_test'@'localhost' with password mariadb_password for the database.

Test that it worked:

docker exec -it nowdb-db mariadb -u now_test -p. Enter the password mariadb_password.

Select database with USE now_test;.

Execute query: select loc_name from now_loc where loc_name like "amb%"; which should print 9 rows if everything went right.

Sequelize models

The sequelize model definitions in backend/src/models were generated automatically by sequelize-auto. This generates the model files from the database, plus an init-models.ts file, which exports initModels-function that you can use to initialize all models. So to access database, you simply import models from utils/db.ts.