shaman-tech / node-mern-stack

Created for toolchain: https://console.bluemix.net/devops/toolchains/c1092138-1e33-4fcc-8b49-a521c9e7c42a?env_id=ibm%3Ayp%3Aus-south

MERN stack starter

The MERN stack starter demonstrates a working application that uses a React frontend, with a backend build with ExpressJS and MongoDB. It shows how the client can make client HTTP requests and maintain persistant sessions.

Getting Started

To run a development environment, you can use the start-dev command. This will start up a development web server on port 3000, and a nodemon-watched API server on port 3100. These development servers will automatically reload if changes are made to the source.

• Install dependencies with:

  yarn
  

• Install MongoDB

• Start the development environment:

  yarn start-dev
  

Docker Compose

If you use Docker and Docker Compose, you can start the entire project with:

docker-compose up

Configuration (Optional)

By default, the server will expect to connect to a MongoDB instance running on localhost:27017. However, you can customize the environment to use different values for the MongoDB host. To do that, you can create a .env file for specifying credential information for MongoDB.

Create a new file called .env, with the following YAML:

MONGO_URL=mongodb://localhost:27017/comments
MONGO_USER=username
MONGO_PASSWORD=password

or instead, you can use the equivalent JSON:

{
  "mongo": {
    "url": "mongodb://localhost:27017/comments",
    "user": "username",
    "password": "password"
  }
}

Where the URL, username, and password are set to your preferences.

Docker Development run

If you would like to run the development tools inside of a docker container, you can set up a local Docker development environment by building the image:

docker build -f Dockerfile-tools -t mern-example:latest .

And running the image:

docker run -v ${PWD}:/usr/app -p 3000:3100 -t mern-example:latest

Kubernetes

You can use Helm and our bundled chart for quickly deploying your application.

Locally with minikube

You can use minikube for creating a local testing cluster. Start up your cluster:

minikube start

Make sure you set your Docker environment to use it. This is important so that the cluster has your Docker images.

eval $(minikube docker-env)

Build your Docker image and give it a tag:

docker build -t mern-example:latest .

Install the Helm chart located in helm/mern on to your cluster:

helm install helm/mern

If using minikube, you will need to add port forwarding to be able to view your application:

kubectl port-forward <pod_name> <external_port>:3000

kubectl port-forward mern-deployment-789311257-36s62 32111:3000

Open your browser to http://localhost:32111

If you want to update your application, you can build a new image with a new version tag, e.x. docker build -t mern:v2 .. Update the version tag in helm/mern/values.yml.

Then, roll out a new release with:

helm upgrade <deployment_name> helm/mern
helm upgrade limping-bee .

On Bluemix Kubernetes

Build the Docker image

1. Start the Docker engine on your local computer

2. Log the local Docker client in to IBM Bluemix Container Registry

bx cr login

This will configure your local Docker client with the right credentials to be able to push images to the Bluemix Container Registry

3. Retrieve the name of the namespace you are going to use to push your Docker images

bx cr namespace-list

If you don't have a namespace, you can create one with bx cr namespace-add my_namespace for example.

4. Build the Docker image of the service

In the following steps, make sure to replace with your namespace name

docker build -t registry.ng.bluemix.net/<namespace>/mern-example:v1 .

5. Push the image to the registry

docker push registry.ng.bluemix.net/<namespace>/mern-example:v1

Create a Kubernetes cluster

1. Create a Kubernetes cluster in Bluemix

bx cs cluster-create <cluster-name>

Note that you can also use an existing cluster

2. Wait for you cluster to be deployed. This step can take awhile, you can check the status of your cluster by using:

bx cs clusters

3. Ensure that the cluster workers are ready:

bx cs workers <cluster-name>

Deploy the Service

1. Retrieve the cluster configuration

bx cs cluster-config <cluster-name>

The output will look like:

Downloading cluster config for mycluster-robert
OK
The configuration for mycluster-robert was downloaded successfully. Export environment variables to start using Kubernetes.

export KUBECONFIG=/home/rfdickerson/.bluemix/plugins/container-service/clusters/mycluster-robert/kube-config-hou02-mycluster-robert.yml

2. Copy and paste the export KUBECONFIG=... line into your shell.

3. Confirm the configuration worked by retrieving the cluster nodes.

kubectl get nodes

4. Edit your helm/mern/Values.yaml with your namespace

replicaCount: 3
revisionHistoryLimit: 1
image:
  repository: registry.ng.bluemix.net/<namespace>/mern-example
  tag: v1
  pullPolicy: IfNotPresent
service:
  name: Node
  type: NodePort
  containerPort: 3000
  env: production
services:
  mongo:
     url: mongo
     name: comments

replace the namespace with your namespace used when pushing your container. You can change the number of relicaCount too.

5. Install the Helm tiller

helm init

6. Install the Helm chart

helm install helm/mern

7. If you need to upgrade an existing deployment, you can use helm upgrade.

Find out your deployment name:

helm ls

NAME         	REVISION	UPDATED                 	STATUS  	CHART     	NAMESPACE
elegant-puma 	5       	Wed Jun 28 12:01:58 2017	DEPLOYED	mern-0.0.1	default

then to update the deployment, use:

helm upgrade elegant-puma helm/mern

Dependencies

• axios - promise-based HTTP client
• foreman - a Procfile-based application utility
• mongoose - mongodb object modelling
• express - minimalist Node.js framework
• react - JS library for building user interfaces