Deploy your Python Simian Web App on Render

Deployment of a Simian Web App involves 4 main steps:

1. Get the code (this repo)
2. Deploy your Simian Web App Python code as a web service on a(ny) backend.
   Render offers convenient & free hosting Python code as a web service, directly from GitHub.
   This GitHub project automates deployment of Python based Simian Web Apps on Render. Setting up deployment from GitHub to Render can be done with the push of a button.
   Updates to your code pushed to GitHub will be automatically deployed to your onrender.com web service.

   This way Simian Web App functionality is exposed as a web service.
   Source code is under your control and not shared with simiansuite.com.

3. Publish the app on Simian Portal
   For evaluation purposes, a shared Simian Evaluation Portal where you can configure your own Simian Web App is readily available.
4. Use your app, live on the web

1. The code - repository contents

• Render build information is provided in render.yaml.
• Python package installation instructions are provided through requirements.txt.
• FastAPI routing and generation of Simian specific startup information in logs is done in main.py.
• Simian Web Apps are placed in the apps folder.

"Hello World!" app included

A basic Simian Web App hello-world.py example is included in this repository in the apps directory.
The endpoint to this is example is https://YOUR_SUBDOMAIN.onrender.com/hello-world

Add your own app(s)

Additional Simian Web App(s) by adding your Simian Web App module to the apps directory.

It is recommended to name your module in lower case chracters and underscores when needed.
The route will be the base name of your module .py file with underscores (_) replaced by dashes (-).

The endpoint to a module called my_first_simian_app.py stored in the apps folder would be https://YOUR_SUBDOMAIN.onrender.com/my-first-simian-app

2. Deploy - to web service on Render

To get started you can deploy directly from this read-only GitHub repository to your own render.com web service. Just click the "Deploy to Render" button below.

If you are new to Render you will need to create an account.

Alternatively, you can fork this project on GitHub and deploy to render from there. Changes pushed to your GitHub repository will then automatically be deployed to your onrender.com web service.

When forking or replicating this repository, change the GitHub url in README.md to point to the new GitHub project (2 locations):

1. "Manual steps" step 1
2. "Deploy to Render" button

Click to deploy

• Sign in
• Render will automatically pick up which repo to deploy
• Enter a unique Blueprint Name and click "Deploy BluePrint" button.
  
• Render will Sync with your GitHub repository and create the web service
  
• Your Render Dashboard now lists the new web service
• Navigate to the web-service and take note of your .onrender.com subdomain (highlighted below)
  
• During start-up of web-service the mapping from available modules/apps to the routes is shown in the log
  

Optional: API Key

API key authentication (very basic, not for production usage) is configured by means of environment variables for the onrender.com web service:

• To enable set SIMIAN_API_KEY_AUTH_ENABLED to 1.
  When this variable does not exist, or is set to 0 api key authentication is disabled.
• If api key authentication is enabled, SIMIAN_API_KEY must be set to your API Key (lower case letters and numbers only).

Render free plan & web service spin-down

The free individual offering from render.com does spin down web services after some period of inactivity (15 minutes at the time of writing). When starting the Simian Web App after such period of inactivity it needs to be spinned up causing a delay of 1 minute or more.

Consider upgrading to a paid render.com plan to avoid spinning down.

Alternatively you could schedule a (cron) job that visits (GET) the root of your webservice every 10 minutes or so.
For example, with connect-time sufficiently large to allow for spin-up:

With Authentication:

curl --connect-timeout 300 --header "Simian-Api-Key:YOUR_API_KEY" https://YOUR_SUBDOMAIN.onrender.com/

Without authentication:

curl --connect-timeout 300 https://YOUR_SUBDOMAIN.onrender.com/

Manual deployment

See https://render.com/docs/deploy-fastapi or follow the steps below:

1. You may use this repository directly or create your own repository from this template if you'd like to customize the code.

2. Create a new Web Service on Render.

3. Specify the URL to your new repository or this repository.

4. Render will automatically detect that you are deploying a Python service and use pip to download the dependencies.

5. Specify the following as the Start Command.

   uvicorn main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port $PORT

6. Click Create Web Service.

3. Publish - on Simian Evaluation Portal

Publishing your Simian Web App:

1. Sign up at Simian Evaluation Portal.
   (On the evaluation portal your app will only be accessible to you.)
   When signed in you will see the Publish app.
   
2. From your Render deployment, take note of:
   The subdomain of your backend deployment under .onrender.com
   The API Key (if enabled on the onrender.com web service)
3. In Simian Evaluation Portal, configure and publish app here.
   
   To configure the included hello_world.py app, set:
   • Subdomain to the subdomain of your onrender.com web service.
     (Subdomain is abc if your webservice runs on abc.onrender.com.)
   • Route to the route to the module under the apps directory that you want to deploy: hello-world for hello_world.py.
     (Route to module is module file name without .py, and with _ replaced by -.)
   • Optionally, when API Key authentication is enabled on the onrender webservice, API Key to the same value configured in the SIMIAN_API_KEY environment varible on the onrender.com web service.
     Then set the title, description, and image to be displayed on the tile representing your app in the portal.

Simian Portal supports app sharing and access management. Access to your app on Simian Evaluation Portal is restricted to yourself only, and solely serves evaluation purposes.
Contact simiansuite.com for Simian Portal cloud, and on-premises options.

Simian Portal works with a range of backend platforms from docker to Azure, and other cloud providers. For evaluation purposes render.com has been chosen because of its convenient deployment path from code on GitHub to a live FastAPI web service, its free entry offering and paid upgrade path, and last but not least because your code remains under your control.

4. Use the app

Start your app via Simian Evaluation Portal.

You can bookmark your app URL for direct access.

The bookmark URL must not contain the ?tab_uuid=... parameter because tab_uuid identifies a specific instance of the app which is cleared when closing the app.

Thanks

Gratefully forked from Render Examples - FastAPI who thanks Harish for the inspiration to create a FastAPI quickstart for Render and for some sample code!