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Finch HTTP Service Template

This is a template for a simple, stateless HTTP API built on top of Finch. It aims to provide a simple, consistent, beginner- to intermediate-level stack, aimed at getting a small HTTP-based service up & running quickly with some things we care about in a production system, including:

This template uses other open source code from Redbubble:

Redbubble also makes available a GraphQL version of this template (which is more complete and contains a Docker image).

If you're after a basic Finch template, several are available:

With more are in the cookbook.

API

You can access the API as follows.

People

$ curl -i "http://localhost:8080/v1/people"
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2017 10:19:46 GMT
Content-Length: 692

{"data":{"people":[{"name":"Luke Skywalker","birth_year":"19BBY","hair_colour":"blond"},{"name":"C-3PO","birth_year":"112BBY","hair_colour":"n/a"},{"name":"R2-D2","birth_year":"33BBY","hair_colour":"n/a"},{"name":"Darth Vader","birth_year":"41.9BBY","hair_colour":"none"},{"name":"Leia Organa","birth_year":"19BBY","hair_colour":"brown"},{"name":"Owen Lars","birth_year":"52BBY","hair_colour":"brown, grey"},{"name":"Beru Whitesun lars","birth_year":"47BBY","hair_colour":"brown"},{"name":"R5-D4","birth_year":"unknown","hair_colour":"n/a"},{"name":"Biggs Darklighter","birth_year":"24BBY","hair_colour":"black"},{"name":"Obi-Wan Kenobi","birth_year":"57BBY","hair_colour":"auburn, white"}]}}

Person

$ curl -i "http://localhost:8080/v1/people/1"
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2017 10:20:40 GMT
Content-Length: 88

{"data":{"person":{"name":"Luke Skywalker","birth_year":"19BBY","hair_colour":"blond"}}}

Healthcheck

$ curl -i "http://localhost:8080/v1/health"
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 2
Content-Language: en
Content-Type: text/plain
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2017 09:46:17 GMT

OK

Setup

To setup for local development, run these steps. Note that most steps assume that you've changed directory to app.

  1. Install Java 1.8 from Oracle. You will need a JDK (not a JRE), as of the time of writing this is "Java SE Development Kit 8u92". There is also documentation available (handy for linking into your IDE).

  2. Run sbt:

    $ cd app
$ ./sbt
> update

    Note. You could also brew install sbt if you'd prefer a system version.

  3. etc/development-env contains a template .env file that you can use to configure your environment variables locally:

    $ cd app
$ cp etc/development.env .env

See sbt-dotenv for more information. Do not check .env into source control!.

Note that if you change this while an sbt session is running, you will need to reload sbt for the new settings to take effect (as it's an sbt plugin).

  1. If you're using IntelliJ for development, grab the Scala plugin, and import the project (File->Open, or Import from the welcome screen) as an SBT project. If you want to run tests, you will need to add the environment variables (in .env) to the run configurations (specs2).

Running

Locally

To run using sbt:

$ ./sbt run

You can also use Revolver for restarts when code changes (recommended!):

$ ./sbt ~reStart

To run using the Heroku tools (requires deployment setup as above), i.e. like it's run in production:

$ ./sbt compile stage
$ heroku local        # which uses [forego](https://github.com/ddollar/forego)

To run in debug mode:

$ ./sbt run -jvm-debug 5005

You can then connect a remote debugger to the JVM.

Production

Deploying to production will restart the app servers (Heroku Dynos) automatically. However if you wish to restart manually you can:

$ heroku restart -a finch-template

Testing

$ ./sbt test

This will start the sbt REPL, from where you can issue commands.

Appending a ~ to the start of any sbt command will run it continuously; for example to run tests continuously:

> ~test

Performance Testing

Note. There are incompatibilities with Gatling & the Netty that Finagle uses at present, the performance tests may not work. If you want to use them, the recommendation is to move back down to Scala 2.11 (for all deps) and use that Gatling version.

Performance testing uses Gattling, and live in the perf/src/it directory. You can run all performance tests using the following:

> gatling-it:test

Or individual scenarios as:

> gatling-it:test-only com.redbubble.perf.scenarios.AppStartup
> gatling-it:test-only *AppStartup

For more information see: http://gatling.io/docs/2.2.4/extensions/sbt_plugin.html

Note. If you run tests against a local server you will need to start it first.

Deployment

This repository is set up for deployment to Heroku, which can be done using:

$ git push heroku master

Before you do though, there is a one-off setup for deployment.

  1. Get an account on Heroku.

  2. Install heroku toolbelt.

  3. Add the git remote (this is a one-off step).

    $ heroku git:remote -a finch-template

The deployment uses the SBT Native Packager to package up the artifacts for deployment. You can run this locally using the stage command:

$ ./sbt compile stage

Here is more information on deployment:

Logs

Local

All logs go to standard out locally when developing.

Production

You can get the logs using:

$ heroku logs -t -a finch-template

This will only store the last 1500 lines, if you want to view more you can enable the PaperTrail plugin.

Monitoring

The system is monitored via New Relic. Note that via Heroku we don't get system level metrics such as CPU & memory.

Metrics

Metrics are exposed via Twitter Metrics. See com.redbubble.gql.util.metrics.Metrics for the entry point.

Local

Metrics are available locally on the admin server: http://localhost:9990/admin

Production

Metrics into production are bridged to New Relic (sent every minute) as custom metrics and are available on the New Relic insights dashboard.

Note that when sending to New Relic, we do filter out some metrics that are collected locally; in particular the JVM metrics (as NR collects these already), as well as tools we don't use (e.g. Zipkin). We also only send the 75th, 95th, 99th & 99.9th percentiles, along with 1, 5 & 15 minute weighted moving averages (for the appropriate metrics type where supported).

Development Overview

This section is aimed at developers on the project, and gives a quick overview of the features & lbraries used:

Tools/Frameworks/Libraries

Finch

Finagle

Cats

Uninstall

You can uninstall everything you installed for this project by:

$ rm -rf ~/.sbt
$ rm -rf ~/.ivy2

Then, if you want, you can uninstall Java by following the instructions here: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/install/mac_jdk.html#A1096903