Application cookbook

This cookbook is designed to be able to describe and deploy web applications. It provides the basic infrastructure; other cookbooks are required to support specific combinations of frameworks and application servers. The following cookbooks are available at this time:

application_java (Java and Tomcat)
application_nginx (nginx reverse proxy)
application_php (PHP with mod_php_apache2)
application_python (Django with Gunicorn)
application_ruby (Rails with Passenger or Unicorn)

Backward compatibility

Previous versions of this cookbook used a set of recipes, with the configuration stored in an apps data bag.

This mode of operation has been DEPRECATED. The existing recipes will keep working for 3 months, and will then be removed. You are advised to upgrade your applications as soon as possible.

Requirements

Chef 0.10.0 or higher required (for Chef environment use).

The following Opscode cookbooks are dependencies, as this cookbook supports automating a large number of web application stacks.

runit
unicorn
passenger_apache2
tomcat
python
gunicorn
apache2
php

Deprecated Recipes

The following recipes are deprecated:

default
django
gunicorn
java_webapp
mod_php_apache2
passenger_apache2
php
rails
tomcat
unicorn

Resources/Providers

The application LWRP configures the basic properties of most applications, regardless of the framework or application server they use. These include:

SCM information for the deployment, such as the repository URL and branch name;
deployment destination, including the filesystem path to deploy to;
any OS packages to install as dependencies;
optional callback to control the deployment.

This LWRP uses the deploy_revision LWRP to perform the bulk of its tasks, and many concepts and parameters map directly to it. Check the documentation for deploy_revision for more information.

Configuration of framework-specific aspects of the application are performed by invoking a sub-resource; see the appropriate cookbook for more documentation.

Actions

:deploy: deploy an application, including any necessary configuration, restarting the associated service if necessary
:force_deploy: same as :deploy, but it will send a :force_deploy action to the deploy resource, directing it to deploy the application even if the same revision is already deployed

Attribute Parameters

name: name attribute. The name of the application you are setting up. This will be used to derive the default value for other attribute
packages: an Array or Hash of packages to be installed before starting the deployment
path: target path of the deployment; it will be created if it does not exist
owner: the user that shall own the target path
group: the group that shall own the target path
strategy: the underlying LWRP that will be used to perform the deployment. The default is :deploy_revision, and it should never be necessary to change it
scm_provider: the provider class to use for the deployment. It defaults to Chef::Provider::Git, you can set it to Chef::Provider::Subversion to deploy from an SVN repository
repository: the URL of the repository the application should be checked out from
revision: an identifier pointing to the revision that should be checkout out
deploy_key: the public key to use to access the repository via SSH
rollback_on_error: if true, exceptions during a deployment will be caught and a clean rollback to the previous version will be attempted; the exception will then be re-raised. Defaults to true; change it only if you know what you are doing
environment: a Hash of environment variables to set while running migrations
purge_before_symlink: an Array of paths (relative to the checkout) to remove before creating symlinks
create_dirs_before_symlink: an Array paths (relative to the checkout) pointing to directories to create before creating symlinks
symlinks: a Hash of shared/dir/path => release/dir/path. It determines which files and dirs in the shared directory get symlinked to the current release directory
symlink_before_migrate: similar to symlinks, except that they will be linked before any migration is run
migrate: if true then migrations will be run; defaults to false
migration_command: a command to run to migrate the application from the previous to the current state
restart_command: a command to run when restarting the application
environment_name: the name of a framework-specific "environment" (for example the Rails environment). By default it is the same as the Chef environment, unless it is _default, in which case it is set to production

Callback Attributes

You can also set a few attributes on this LWRP that are interpreted as callback to be called at specific points during a deployment. If you pass a block, it will be evaluated within a new context. If you pass a string, it will be interpreted as a path (relative to the release directory) to a file; if it exists, it will be loaded and evaluated as though it were a Chef recipe.

The following callback attributes are available:

before_deploy: invoked immediately after initial setup and before the deployment proper is started. This callback will be invoked on every Chef run
before_migrate
before_symlink
before_restart
after_restart

Sub-resources

Anything that is not a known attribute will be interpreted as the name of a sub-resource; the resource will be looked up, and any nested attribute will be passed to it. More than one sub-resource can be added to an application; the order is significant, with the latter sub-resources overriding any sub-resource that comes before.

Sub-resources can set their own values for some attributes; if they do, they will be merged together with the attribute set on the main resource. The attributes that support this behavior are the following:

environment: environment variables from the application and from sub-resources will be merged together, with later resources overriding values set in the application or previous resources
migration_command: commands from the application and from sub-resources will be concatenated together joined with '&&' and run as a single shell command. The migration will only succeed if all the commands succeed
restart_command: commands from the application and from sub-resources will be evaluated in order
symlink_before_migrate: will be concatenated as a single array
callbacks: sub-resources callbacks will be invoked first, followed by the application callbacks

Usage

To use the application cookbook we recommend creating a cookbook named after the application, e.g. my_app. In metadata.rb you should declare a dependency on this cookbook and any framework cookbook the application may need. For example a Rails application may include:

depends "application"
depends "application_rails"

The default recipe should describe your application using the application LWRP; you may also include additional recipes, for example to set up a database, queues, search engines and other components of your application.

A recipe using this LWRP may look like this:

application "my_app" do
  path "/deploy/to/dir"
  owner "app-user"
  group "app-group"

  repository "http://git.example.com/my-app.git"
  revision "production"

  rails do
    # Rails-specific configuration
  end

  passenger_apache2 do
    # Passenger-specific configuration
  end
end

You can of course use any code necessary to determine the value of attributes:

application "my_app" do
  repository "http://git.example.com/my-app.git"
  revision node.chef_environment == "production" ? "production" : "develop"
end

Attributes from the application and from sub-resources are merged together:

application "my_app" do
  restart_command "kill -1 `cat /var/run/one.pid`"
  environment "LC_ALL" => "en", "FOO" => "bar"

  rails do
    restart_command "touch /tmp/something"
    environment "LC_ALL" => "en_US"
  end

  passenger_apache2 do
    environment "FOO" => "baz"
  end
end

# at the end, you will have:
#
# restart_command #=> kill -1 `cat /var/run/one.pid` && touch /tmp/something
# environment #=> LC_ALL=en_US FOO=baz

To use the application cookbook, we recommend creating a role named after the application, e.g. my_app. Create a Ruby DSL role in your chef-repo, or create the role directly with knife.

% knife role show my_app -Fj
{
  "name": "my_app",
  "chef_type": "role",
  "json_class": "Chef::Role",
  "default_attributes": {
  },
  "description": "",
  "run_list": [
    "recipe[my_app]"
  ],
  "override_attributes": {
  }
}

License and Author

Author:: Adam Jacob (adam@opscode.com) Author:: Andrea Campi (andrea.campi@zephirworks.com.com) Author:: Joshua Timberman (joshua@opscode.com) Author:: Seth Chisamore (schisamo@opscode.com)

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

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