opsworks-meteor-deploy Cookbook

This repository includes 6 cookbooks for deploying and starting a meteor application that has been compiled into a node application on Amazon Web Services Opsworks in a scalable manner. (Based on AWS Opsworks Chef 12).

###Based on deploying a meteor app after running meteor build.

1. The first cookbook installs node v0.10.45 follwing [this guide](# Following https://github.com/nodesource/distributions#debinstall). This is necessary with Meteor 1.3.* because the latest version of Meteor needs node v0.10.41 or greater (but not greater v0.10.4x). Opsworks with Cheff 11 only supports node v0.10.40 as of May 2016, so the node script is needed to upgrade to node v0.10.45.
2. This cookbook should be called as node-v0_10_45 in AWS Opsworks under the Setup series of Chef recipes for the Node.js layer.
3. The second cookbook installs foreverjs, the npm module that can start a node application as a daemon.
4. This cookbook should be called as foreverjs in AWS Opsworks under the Setup series of Chef recipes for the Node.js layer.
5. The third cookbook installs phantomjs, this dependency is useful for certain Meteor functionality such as using spiderable for SEO. Spiderable does not work well as of May 2016. Phantomjs is still helpful for rendering the meteor app for SEO. The Meteor Development Group now recommends using prerender.io for SEO.
6. This cookbook should be called as phantomjs in AWS Opsworks under the Setup series of Chef recipes for the Node.js layer.
7. The fourth cookbook goes to S3 and pulls the tarball onto the server and unbundles it.
8. This cookbook should be called as get-app in AWS Opsworks under the Deploy series of Chef recipes for the Node.js layer.
9. The fifth cookbook, meteor-deploy, runs the two commands necessary to start the node application.
10. Commands executed (similar to the meteor build instructions) 1. (cd programs/server && npm install) 2. PORT=port ROOT_URL=root_url MONGO_URL=mongo_url MAIL_URL=mail_url forever start main.js
11. This cookbook should be called as meteor-deploy in the Deploy series of Chef recipes for the Node.js layer.
12. Make sure to replace the directory variable YOUR_APP_NAME with your application's name.
13. Place this JSON in the Custom JSON area of the Stack Settings Configuration management

{
  "deploy" : {
    "YOUR_APP_NAME" : {
      "PORT" : "port",
      "ROOT_URL" : "root_url",
      "MONGO_URL" : "mongo_url",
      "MAIL_URL" : "mail_url",
      [optional] "DISABLE_WEBSOCKETS" : 0 or 1
    }
  }
}

6. The sixth cookbook, meteor-undeploy, runs the command necessary to stop the meteor application from running with forever stopall.
7. This cookbook should be called as meteor-undeploy in the Undeploy series of Chef recipes for the Node.js layer.

Note 1: You need to build the application for the proper architecture i.e. if you run the command on an OS X machine, but plan to deploy to a linux server, you need to specify the architecture with --architecture.

Note 2: The meteor build output README specifies exporting the ROOT_URL, MONGO_URL, and MAIL_URL variable then running node main.js. This does not work well with Opsworks because Chef recipies wait for the specified command to finish, so foreverjs helps the cookbook to finish executing rather than stall, and specifiying these variables in the start command is simpler than exporting them into the shell environment.

Note 3: The undeploy cookbook does not run properly unless the developer explicity runs it in the Opsworks Deploy Apps commands. It should run automatically when deploying a new version of the application, but for some reason it does not finish running forever stopall; therefore Undeploy needs to be explicity run before running Deploy.

Note 4: AWS Opsworks with Chef 12 uses data bags. The different cookbooks use commands that source content from the first app listed in your Opsworks configuration. Certain configurations include the app 'name','app_source' and 'url'. For more information on how data bags work on AWS, please refer to AWS OpsWorks Data Bag Reference.

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Alex J Meyers

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

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