Blog Post Api

Description

A simple api for creating blog posts and listing blog previously created blog posts using Node, Express, and Sqlite3.

Getting Started

Running Locally with Docker

Install Node Modules

With blogPostApi/ as your current directory run:

docker-compose run api npm install

Start the API

docker-compose up

The server should be running at http://localhost:3000/posts

Run tests

docker-compose run api npm test

The CI Pipeline

Terraform Cloud

Inside the terraform folder you'll find several .tf files. These files define the CI Pipeline for the api.

Updating the build pipeline

When a commit on a file in the terraform folder of the master branch is pushed Terraform Cloud will trigger a plan and (if successful) apply the infrastructure changes defined in the .tf files.

AWS CodeBuild

Inside the api folder you'll find a buildspec.yml file.

It defines the following pipeline:

Build Dockerfile

-> Tag the image with the last 7 characters of the commit hash

-> Tag the image as "latest"

-> Run the test script on the image

-> If all tests pass, push the image to the AWS Elastic Container Repository (ECR)

Deploying the latest revision

Deploying on an EC2 Instance using Docker

Requirements

• The AMI must have docker and the aws cli (atleast version 2) installed
• The instance profile of the EC2 profile must have permission to pull from the ECR repository

Caution! Ephemeral Database

Sqlite3 runs inside the docker container. When deploying or restarting the application all entries will be lost.

Pull the latest image and run the api

docker pull 021204337871.dkr.ecr.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/blog-post-api:latest
docker run -p 3000:3000 021204337871.dkr.ecr.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/blog-post-api:latest

The application should now be running on PORT 3000. This could be exposed through an Application Load Balancer or pubic ip address.

Next Steps

The following would be reasonable next steps for improving the deployment process of the api.

• Automate deployment through a CD tool such as AWS CodeDeploy or Hashicorp Nomad via Terraform and Packer (for building the AMIs)
• Switch database to a managed relational database such as Postgres on AWS Aurora for persistence
• Deploy with a container orchastration tool such as Kubernetes or ECS