App Runner

The little web app runner that hosts java, clojure, scala, golang and nodejs apps. This allows you to easily deploy a self-hosted Platform As A Service where you can very easily add new apps and have App Runner build and run them by cloning the code from a Git repo.

Features

• Host your own Platform as a Service: you just need Java 8, plus optional build tools (Maven, Leinigen, Scala/SBT, go compiler, NodeJS/NPM).
• Deploy web apps with no build servers or deploy scripts needed: tell AppRunner the Git URL and it will automatically build and host it.
• Auto deploy on source control change when using post-commit hooks
• Zero downtime deployment: when changes are being deployed, a new instance is built, tests are run, and the app is started. Only when the new instance is running will it be made live.
• An optional dashboard which links to all your apps making it easy to find, add, and deploy.
• Horizontally scale individual app runners across multiple machines with App Runner Router

Who is this for?

App Runner is especially useful for people or teams who are creating many little web applications and want the convenience of a platform such as Heroku but cannot use an external service.

Change log

• 1.5.6 Added backup info to the apps API and added app name validation
• 1.5.4 Added optional config for handling proxy timeouts: apprunner.proxy.idle.timeout (default 30000ms) apprunner.proxy.total.timeout (default 60000ms).
• 1.5.1 Fixed bug where sometimes creating a new app it would say there are no suitable runners, even though there are. Also added lastBuild and lastSuccessfulBuild to the app API to provide information about when and what was built (the git commit info is included).
• 1.4.0 Added a PUT /apps/{name} method to change the GIT URL of an app, and made it so POSTing an app to /apps that already exists returns a 400 error. Also fixed the return type (to application/json) for POST /apps. There is also --app-name=your-app-name passed as a command line parameter to Node apps, mostly to aid in finding which app is which when looking at running processes.
• 1.3.4 GoLang support
• 1.2.2 Support for HTTPS (see the sample config file for more info). This is also the first version that HTTPS can be used on the app runner router (or other reverse proxies).
• 1.1.0 Optional support for Scala and better reporting of versions of tools such as java, node, lein etc. When adding a new app, it is immediately cloned and an error is returned if it cannot be cloned or this instance does not support the project type.
• 1.0.7 Optional backup support: specify a Git URL in the config (appserver.backup.url) to have the data directory backed up to a git repo once an hour.

Running locally

Run com.danielflower.apprunner.RunLocal.main from your IDE. This will use the settings in sample-config.properties. Upon startup, it will try to download, build, and deploy the application specified in the config. Launch the URL that is logged on startup see the hosted sample app.

Deploying

You need to have a Windows or Linux server available with Java and one or more build tools installed:

• Java 8 or later
• Maven (if you wish to support Maven builds)
• Lein (if you wish to support Clojure builds)
• NodeJS and NPM (if you wish to support Nodejs builds)
• Scala and SBT (if you wish to support Scala builds)
• GoLang (if you wish to support go builds)

It's easiest if each tool is available to run from the path, but you can point to specific paths by setting paths in your config file.

Download the latest version of App Runner from Maven central

Run with java -jar app-runner-{version}.jar /path/to/config.properties

See sample-config.properties for sample configuration. The local directory in this repo also has sample start scripts and logging configuration.

Contribute

You will also need to provide M2_HOME=/path/to/maven/home before you run source code and test cases.