mdsohelmia / rafter

Serverless deployment platform powered by Google Cloud

Rafter 🏡

Rafter is a serverless deployment platform powered by Google Cloud. It leverages Google Cloud Run (and many other tools) to transform your Git repository into a fully-scalable serverless application running in the cloud - with zero configuration.

💰 Scales to zero when not in use, saving you money — perfect for hobby projects
🔥 Automatically scales to handle load
🔌 Manages, connects and creates Cloud SQL databases for your applications automatically
⚡️ Connects to GitHub and supports deploy-on-push
🚀 Spin up multiple environments available at vanity URLs at the click of a button
✨ No Dockerfiles required

⚠️ Rafter is still very much a work-in-progress! ⚠️

Google Cloud Services

Cloud Run (web service)

Official Documentation

• Creates services for each environment of each project, automatically
• Cloud Run handles all traffic roll-out, scaling, and configuration
• Environment variables are assigned to each unique service through the API

Cloud Build (image creation)

Official Documentation

• Docker images are created when code is pushed to GitHub
• Dockerfile is automatically provided based on type of project
• Currently supported: Laravel, Node.js

Cloud SQL (database)

Official Documentation

• Database instances are provisioned by Rafter through the API
• Databases are created and assigned to projects automatically using the Admin API
• Environmental variables are properly assigned based on type of project

Cloud Firestore (cache and session drivers)

UPDATE: This... doesn't work great, due to a number of factors. Looking into alternatives.

Official Documentation

• NoSQL database to support key-value caching and session management
• Drivers integrated automatically based on project
• No additional credentials required for consumer apps to use, since credentials are supplied within Cloud Run

Cloud Tasks (queue driver)

Official Documentation

• Robust queue management platform
• Queues are automatically created for each environment
• Dedicated Cloud Run service is created for each project to handle incoming jobs through HTTP request payloads
• No daemon or worker instance is required
• Since Cloud Run is serverless, instances can fan out, thousands of jobs can be processed in a matter of seconds

Cloud Storage (image artifacts and uploads)

Official Documentation

• Object storage, similar to S3
• Automatically handles uploaded artifacts from Cloud Build
• Integrated into application helpers based on project type to handle user uploads

Cloud Scheduler

Official Documentation

• Used for firing cron events in e.g. Laravel

Cloud Logging

Official Documentation

• HTTP requests, stdout and app logs displayed inside Rafter log viewer

Roadmap

Here are things I'd like to work on next:

• Extract laravel-rafter-core into a package
• Inject Laravel Stackdriver log driver config
• Support other projects:
  • Node
  • WordPress
  • Rails
  • Go
  • Custom Dockerfile
• Email driver support (does Google offer this as part of GCP?)
• Integration of Secret Manager
• Integration of commands
• Integration of GCS for better uploads with Laravel
• Better Database operations
• Leverage GitHub Deployment API to mark when a branch has been deployed
• Lots of UI upgrades:
  • Log viewer
  • Database information
  • User profile/settings
• Better Cloud Build optimization
  • Clone using ZIP instead of Git
  • Use secrets rather than plain text tokens for security
  • Consider adding multistage builds for Nodejs, Composer building steps
• Implement Custom Domain assignment and onboarding
• Implement an environment deletion workflow to delete resources/schedulers/etc
• Allow users to clone a public project without having to connect a source provider
• Create a CLI to allow users to push a local project without connecting a source provider

Development notes

• Clone it
• Use Valet to run it and connect to a local MySQL database
• Run make share to fire up ngrok.io local tunnel
• Requires grpc PHP extension to be installed locally: pecl install grpc

Inspiration

• Laravel Vapor and Laravel Forge
• Heroku