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Deployment

Introduction​

Tramvai is a regular node.js application that can be run using standard tools available in the node.js community. Restrictions are only imposed on the file structure and the need to pass ENV variables to the application

List of actions required to deploy the application​

  • build the application in production mode
  • fill in assets
  • build a docker container with application files
  • run by passing ENV variables

Build the project​

To build the project, you must use the command (before installing the dependencies in the project)

tramvai build APP_ID

in APP_ID, you must pass the application identifier. After executing the command, the dist directory will appear with the build files for the server and client code

Create a docker container​

Recommended Dockerfile

FROM node:18-buster-slim
WORKDIR /app
COPY dist/server /app/
COPY package.json /app/
ENV NODE_ENV='production'

EXPOSE 3000
CMD [ "node", "--max-http-header-size=80000", "/app/server.js" ]
  • FROM - you can put a 16+ version of the node, preferably an alpine version to reduce the size

Deploy static assets​

The recommended way is to upload files to a CDN, since node.js does not do a very good job of serving static content, so there will be a lot of traffic for our infrastructure. Therefore, for production applications that clients will use, you should always use a CDN.

To do this, upload the contents of the dist/client folder to the CDN according to the method you choose, you get the URL at which the files will be available and substitute this url into the ENV variable ASSETS_PREFIX for example ASSETS_PREFIX=https://cdn-domain.com/my-awesome-app/

If you do not need a CDN, then you can see below in the paragraph "Launching an application without a client CDN", it is worth using for test benches or not loaded applications

Deploy application​

The application is launched as a normal node.js process with the node command; when starting, it is necessary to pass all the necessary ENV variables (the list of ENVs depends on the modules used by the application). If you do not add ENV variables, the application will not start. Don't forget about the variable ASSETS_PREFIX

Explanation​

Probes​

If you deploy to kubernetes, then for these cases there are special urls for probes that you need to use

  • /healthz - after starting the application, it always response OK
  • /readyz - after starting the application, it always response OK

Launching an application without a client CDN​

Tramvai has a built-in static return server. It is better not to do this, for the reason that nodeJS is not the best tool for this and static will affect the application.

In general, everything is the same as in a regular deployment, but you need to add copying user assets to the docker image, for this:

  • add copy files COPY dist/client /app/public/statics
  • change ENV variable ASSETS_PREFIX

Dockerfile example

FROM node:18-buster-slim
WORKDIR /app
COPY dist/server /app/
COPY package.json /app/
COPY dist/client /app/public/statics
ENV NODE_ENV='production'

EXPOSE 3000
CMD [ "node", "--max-http-header-size=80000", "/app/server.js" ]

When starting the application, you must pass ASSETS_PREFIX=/statics/. When the application starts, the server for serving statistics will rise and all files inside the /public/ directory will be available. Thus, the client will be able to receive data on the url /statics/payment.js

Run locally in a docker container​

The device must have https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop installed and run the command docker run hello-world

We build the project in production mode, we will have an artifact in the dist directory​

yarn build

Build a docker application image​

docker build -t test/myapp .

Run the created image​

docker run --rm -e DANGEROUS_UNSAFE_ENV_FILES='true' -e ASSETS_PREFIX='http://localhost:4000/static/' -v ${PWD}/env.development.js:/app/env.development.js -v ${PWD}/dist/client:/app/static  -e DEV_STATIC=true -p 3000:3000 -p 4000:4000 -d test/myapp

To stop the container, you need to get the CONTAINER ID, run the docker ps command and then run the command docker stop <CONTAINER ID>

To stop all containers​

docker kill $(docker ps --quiet)