Welcome to your beanstalk-maven-plugin archetype project!

About

For up to date information, see http://docs.ingenieux.com.br/project/beanstalker/

This project was generated from the elasticbeanstalk-service-webapp-archetype.

As it is, it is a boilerplate code for a generic, modern webapp using Amazon Web Services' Elastic Beanstalk Service.

It also includes some tips and tricks we've learned over the past years when using Elastic Beanstalk. They include:

• Custom Fixtures for Embedded in-Container Testing (see ServerRule class)
• Another one for Guice-based startup (ContainerRule)
• Uses rest-assured for fluent JAX-RS testing
• logback.xml (and logback-test.xml) files, including Syslog usage for PaperTrail
• One single Guice module for each and every AWS-supported Java Client (BaseAWSModule)
• Support for dealing with the configuration parameters for Beanstalk (BeanstalkCredentialsProviderChain)
• Jackson, Jersey, and Guice configured out of the box (although you're likely to run into problems if you ever need viewables)
• Basic JAX-RS Boilerplate Code
• A Simple Notification Service (SNS) Notification JAX-RS Resource on BaseSNSResource and SNSResource (useful if you need to plug-in notifications)
• A Basic Health Code Check (handy!)

In fact, this archetype was derived from an internal ingenieux project - a backend for ekaterminal, which is another piece of software we are fairly confident you'll love it if you do elastic beanstalk/mapreduce too often.

We hope you like it. If you run into any problems, please let us know by the mailing list or the issue tracker

Setting up your Maven Build

TL;DR: Set AWS_ACCESS_KEY and AWS_SECRET_KEY from your environment.

Create / Edit your settings.xml as suggested in the Security Page

This project, as is, supports modes 1-2 (settings.xml), and it looks by default for aws.amazon.com.

Don't worry, you're likely to do it once for each and every machine you plan to build. :)

Configuring your Project

We suggest convention over configuration, but anyway. The only setting you're likely to set is your cnamePrefix and ```environmentRef```` properties on your pom.xml file.

Make sure you pick something unique and unlikely to conflict with other users.

It is also interesting to review the parameters in the properties section.

Deploying

Simply call mvn deploy -Pfast-deploy

If your environment is Ready (Green or Red), it will deploy. If not, a new version will get published.

You can always launch a new environment...

Launching an Environment

If you did the previous step, it will create a new elastic beanstalk application for you in AWS Console. You can launch and environment right away with:

mvn beanstalk:create-environment

Or you could use the console. From the console, click in "Launch New Environment". In this dialog, not all options are available, so initially set the Health Check URL to the /debug handler:

/services/api/v1/debug

Don't launch it yet, though. We have some tips...

Deploy versus Fast-Deploy

There are two variables involved when deploying into AWS Elastic Beanstalk:

• Git versus S3 (we chose git in this project)
• Downtime or Zero-Downtime

Since we already made your life simpler by choosing git over S3, you have two profiles to pick according to your needs:

• Production: mvn -Pdeploy deploy will do a zero-downtime deploy. No downtime, but uses more resources
• Development: mvn -Pfast-deploy deploy will do a plain git deploy. It will incur downtime, but uses less resources

Environment / Configuration Tips:

• We suggest you save your environment into a configuration template once you're happy. We suggest envname-yyyymmdd-nn, where NN is a number which gets incremented.

Hint: Use mvn beanstalk:tag-environment to do this. If you want to launch a new environment based on this template, simply use mvn beanstalk:create-environment -Dbeanstalk.templateName=envname-yyyymmdd-nn

Setting the Proper Health Check URL

Besides that, make sure you can map to an SSH Key you already have, so you are able to log into your EC2 Instance and troubleshoot any problems (unlikely, but better safe than sorry).

Ok, now you can launch.

Once the application is launched (and there's a Green Icon), click in "Edit Configuration" and set your applications AWS Access Key / Shared Key, then you can set set the proper Health Check URL:

/services/api/v1/health/check

SCM Notes

Git Fast-Deploy

Please never commit the contents of your tmp-git-staging directory.

Its there to cache locally and enable fast deployments into elastic beanstalk via the git backend.

(if you look closely, thats the reason for both .gitignore and .hgignore files)

Code Notes

Testing

The project includes a lot of boilerplate code useful for AWS. We tried to achieve a mix (e.g., avoiding adding too much dependencies), and if you want, you're free to get rid of it.

Health Check

The health check code tries to poll DynamoDB, S3, and EC2. If your EC2 keys are IAM-limited, comment-out the relevant sections.

JAX-RS

This project has a few particular details. If you want to rename your root resource path, look under WebModule instead of web.xml.

Misc Notes

• Check the plugin page for General Reference and Usage Instructions.
• Subscribe to the beanstalker-users list at [[http://groups.google.com/group/beanstalker-users]] to get up-to-date information
• Problems? Let us know, on the lists or the issue tracker
• Feedback please!

We hope beanstalk-maven-plugin helps your life easier, and find it fun and easy as much as we do.

btw, why not donate to beanstalker?

Thank you.