Alix, the tiny microservice platform for Python

Alix is a very simple microservices Python platform for Linux (also compatible with Windows). It is a publish-subscribe microservice architecture based on the Redis message broker. All classes that implements the Alix class:

• have the onMessage method executed each time a message is sent to the channel they are listening to
• send to the output channel the return value of the onMessage method
• are supported by the Alix platform (list, start, stop, info... use alix help to get commands list)

With Alix creating a micro service is as simple as that:

• create a ping_ms.py file with the following code

# ping_ms.py

from alix import Alix
class MicroService(Alix):
    #onMessage is executed each time a message is sent to the channel the service is listening to
    def onMessage(self, message):
        #implement your code here
        
        #the return value will be sent to the output channel of the service
        return "pong " + message

• register, start and test your service

    # register ping service with the following parameters: 
    #     service name, 
    #     input channel, 
    #     module name, 
    #     module path, 
    #     service description
    $ alix register ping ping_input_channel ping_ms /home/myuser/alix "this is ping micro service"
    
    # set ping output channel
    $ alix setOutputChannel ping ping_output_channel
    
    # start ping service
    $ alix start ping
    
    # get service info
    $ alix info ping
    
    # display services list
    $ alix list
    
    # send message to ping_input_channel channel (will trigger the execution of ping service)
    $ alix sendMessage ping_input_channel "my message"

Install Alix

• install Redis (standard installation http://redis.io/download or Docker https://hub.docker.com/_/redis/)
• switch to root user

    $ sudo su

• install alix python package

    $ pip install https://github.com/boudartjj/alix/archive/v0.5-alpha.tar.gz

• install alix server

    $ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/boudartjj/alix/master/bin/alix-srv
    $ chmod 755 alix-srv
    $ mv alix-srv /usr/bin

• start alix server method 1 (Debian / Ubuntu)

    $ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/boudartjj/alix/master/bin/alixd
    $ chmod 755 alixd
    $ mv alixd /etc/init.d
    $ service alixd start

• start alix server method 2 (requires PM2 - http://pm2.keymetrics.io/docs/usage/quick-start/)

    $ pm2 start alix-srv --interpreter python

• install alix cli

    $ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/boudartjj/alix/master/bin/alix
    $ chmod 755 alix
    $ mv alix /usr/bin