stack-in-a-box

This stack is built on:

• Caddy 1 - reverse proxy and JWT auth for static assets and admin interface
• RethinkDB 2 - "real-time" database
• Horizon 3 - "real-time" javascript client and server interface for RethinkDB
• Express 4 - add REST endpoints through Horizon client on server side
• Vue 5 - front end framework

Purpose

The goal of this project is to provide all the parts necessary to create a "real-time" web-app while still providing good old REST endpoints to the same data.

This project is a proof of concept based on this Horizon issue

There may be better ways to do this kind of thing as it is still evolving:

1. A feathers-horizon 6 might do the trick if someone writes it.
2. Can Redux provide Horizon across multiple transports?
3. Horizon Plugins?

This still leaves other questions like:

1. Should my async tasks access the database directly through ReQL?
2. Can I rely on change-feeds and ditch message queues?
3. If I dog-food my APIs then I can never use ReQL and that stinks...
4. What about HTTP/2 SSE transports?

Requirements

• docker
• docker-compose > v1.6 to support version: '2' docker-compose.yml format

Get Started

# cone this repo
git clone https://github.com/ubergarm/stack-in-a-box
cd stack-in-a-box
# build docker images
docker-compose build
# install rest services dependencies
docker run --rm -it -v $PWD/rest:/app \
           --entrypoint=/bin/sh \
           ubergarm/horizon -c "npm install"
# fixup permissions
sudo chown -R $UID:$UID ./rest

You may need to apply a patch 7 for Horizon version 1.1.3:

# check your horizon version
docker run --rm -it ubergarm/horizon version
# if it is 1.1.3 then do the next step
sed -e "/require('imports?this/ s/^#*/\/\//" -i \
    ./rest/node_modules/@horizon/client/lib/util/fetch.js

Now you're ready to run!

Usage

NOTE: docker-config.yml defaults will attempt to bind to your Docker hosts public network iterface on ports 80 and 443.

# bring up the stack
docker-compose up

Now you can do a few things:

1. RethinkDB admin interface
2. Static Files
3. Realtime Chat Demo
4. REST interface

Use the REST interface:

# GET some data
curl http://localhost/messages
# POST some data
curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"text":"hello"}' http://localhost/messages
# TODO
# JWT example
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer MY_TOKEN" http://localhost/messages

Horizon CLI

An example of initializing a Horizon app.

docker run --rm -it -v `pwd`:/app ubergarm/horizon init realtime
sudo chown -R $UID:$UID ./realtime

TODO

• Caddy basic config and static files
• RethinkDB admin ui behind proxy
• Horizon chat app working behind proxy
• Express route behind proxy exposing Horizon client through REST
• GET/POST example for REST API CRUD
• Authentication
• Authorization mapping JWT claims to Horizon users
• Configure permissions running horizon without --dev
• Secure RethinkDB admin ui with JWT auth
• Full CRUD support
• REST CRUD Schema enforcment middleware
• Maintain a Horizon client connection pool server side?
• Volume mount .caddy folder to save ACME certs between restarts.
• Test for websockets and HTTP/2 proper behavior over TLS

Issues

• You need custom builds of Caddy to support sweet addons like JWT auth.
• messages REST service doesn't return on first call. Hit it twice.

References

• 1: https://caddyserver.com/
• 2: https://www.rethinkdb.com/
• 3: http://horizon.io/docs/getting-started/
• 4: https://expressjs.com/
• 5: https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon/tree/next/examples/vue-chat-app
• 6: http://feathersjs.com/
• 7: https://github.com/joshwnj/knowledge/blob/master/horizon-in-node/index.md