​Deploy Internet Identity locally

Image source: DFINITY foundation

So, you are looking to deploy Internet Identity (II) locally?

​Here are my four easiest solution to do so!

Introduction

​To deploy II locally, we need to get its canister (Wasm module). We can either build the code ourself, using Docker and the docker-build script provided by the II team, or download an existing release.

​As I really dislike doing anything Devops related myself and, also because the goal of this tutorial is to make things happen fast, the following solutions are using the pre-build/released wasm (the above second option).

​The first two options are applicable for any dapps, the last two are more useful if you start a new project.

​1. Automatic Installation

It is possible to set up II for a project with dfx >= 0.12.0 using a custom canister.

So, just drop the following configuration in your project and that’s already it.

{
   "canisters": {

        ...

          "internet_identity": {
         "type": "custom",
            "candid": "https://github.com/dfinity/internet-identity/releases/latest/download/internet_identity.did",
            "wasm": "https://github.com/dfinity/internet-identity/releases/latest/download/internet_identity_dev.wasm.gz",
            "shrink": false,
           "remote": {
            "candid": "internet_identity.did",
              "id": {
               "ic": "rdmx6-jaaaa-aaaaa-aaadq-cai"
            }
           }
        }
   },

    ...

}

Using dfx​ < v0.12.0, it’s a bit more verbose — or hacky depends the point of view — but we can also leverage the build​ callback to download and install II automatically.

{
   "canisters": {

        ...

          "internet_identity": {
         "type": "custom",
         "candid": "internet_identity.did",
         "wasm": "internet_identity.wasm.gz",
         "build": "bash -c 'test -f internet_identity.wasm.gz || curl -sSL https://github.com/dfinity/internet-identity/releases/latest/download/internet_identity_dev.wasm.gz -o internet_identity.wasm.gz; test -f internet_identity.did || curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dfinity/internet-identity/main/src/internet_identity/internet_identity.did -o…