I'm currently working on a live project. The frontend part of the system is in ReactJS. We are using create-react-app as the starter kit.
We are facing some issues in deploying the application on live server. Earlier we followed the strategy of pushing the code on server and then creating the build on it. But we noticed that so long the build was generating, our site became unavailable. Which does not seem right. Hence we decide to create build folder in developer's local machine and push the build to the server. But now we are receiving a lot of change requests and feature requests, hence I'm planning to move to a robust git branching model. I believe this will create problem with the way we are currently handling our deployment strategy(which is to move the build to production).
It will be really helpful if some one can show us the right direction in handling deployment of ReactJS apps.
You can use Jenkins which can be configured to trigger the build as soon as a code in a branch is checked-in in GIT. I have not worked on Jenkins but surely, I have seen people using Jenkins for such things.
Jenkins will trigger the build in its own environment (or you can create a temp folder for the time being the build is getting generated if Jenkins operates on the server directly) which will generate the output bundle. So your code will not be removed from the server for that while and you can patch your new files to the actual folder (which can also be automated using Jenkins).
What is the best way to dynamically provide configuration to a vespa application?
It seems that the only method that is talked about is baking configuration values into the application package but is there any way to provide configuration values outside of that? ie are there cli tools to update individual configuration values at runtime?
Are there any recommendations or best practices for managing configuration across different environments (ie production vs development) ? At Oath/VMG is configuration checked into source control or managed outside of that?
Typically all configuration changes are made by deploying an updated application package. As you suggest, this is usually done by a CI/CD setup which builds and deploys the application package from a git repository whenever that changes.
This way it is easy to ensure changes have been reviewed (before merge), track all changes that have been made and roll them back if necessary. It is also easy to verify that the same changes which have been deployed and tested (preferably by automated tests) in a development / test environment are the ones that are deployed to production - because the same application package is deployed through each of those environments in order.
It is however also possible to update files in a deployed application package and create a new session from this, which may be useful if your application package has some huge resources. See https://docs.vespa.ai/documentation/cloudconfig/deploy-rest-api-v2.html#use-case-modify
Is it possible to customize the DNN 8 modules and Skins? Is it possible to config the DNN 8 and use it in VS 2010 framework 4.0? If is it let me know the steps to do, because I have configured DNN 8 site to the IIS 7 and it works good from the there, but when I am trying to load this to the VS2010 and Build it, it gives me different errors.
Errors:
i) Unknown server tag 'dnn:DnnCssIncludes' - Which was resolved by adding one line for dnn tag in the same file.
ii) After resolving previous error the another error wsa of ckFinder, and it was resolved by adding ckFinder.dll file in bin folder.
iii) After resolving previous issues it generates new error for ckEditor. It shows me the following error message:
The type or namespace name 'Ventrian' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)
I have tried to resolve and search for the solution but fail to do. Will any one let me know the fixes for this?
Yes, this is possible, you will want to do a couple of things
Setup your Environment
Open the Project for whatever you are modifying, this typically involves install the SOURCE package of the extension you want to modify.
Don't change "core", meaning don't change "DNN" itself, you can, it's open source, but once you do you are forked and upgrading to new releases of DNN is very difficult to do if you aren't careful.
Setting up your environment
From http://www.christoc.com/Tutorials/All-Tutorials/aid/1
Setting up your development environment can vary based on what your end goal is. If you are doing module development for your own use, and within your own DNN environments, you can ignore a few of the settings below. If you are doing module development with the idea that you might turn around and give the modules away, or sell them, then you will likely want to follow the guidelines set forth below to support the widest array of DNN installation environments.
I recommend that each developer have their own local development environment, with a local IIS website running DotNetNuke, and a SQL Server 2008/2012 (not express, though you can use it) database for the website. Having an individual development environment makes group module development far easier than if you share environments/databases.
Choosing a DotNetNuke Version
Choosing a version of DotNetNuke is important when you start your development for couple of reasons. For modules that you are developing for yourself, you need to ask, what is the minimum version of DotNetNuke that you have in production. Are you running DNN 5.6.1? Are you running 6.2.6, 7.0.0, 7.0.6? Based on the answer you can determine what version of DNN you should setup as your development environment. You shouldn't be developing on a newer version of DNN than what you have running in production. As with everything there are ways around this, but I am not going to go into the details on that in this tutorial.
As a developer working to create modules and release those, you might have production sites that are running on the latest and greatest version of DNN, but what about your customers? Or your potential customers? You have to ask yourself, do you want to provide support for really old versions of DotNetNuke? From a development perspective you will probably say no, but from a business perspective, you might say yes, and here’s why. Not everyone upgrades DotNetNuke websites as they should, and often times you will find that some people never upgrade. While I don’t advise taking that approach to managing a DotNetNuke website, it is a fact of life that people don’t always upgrade and there are thousands of people, if not tens of thousands, that have sites that aren’t running on the latest version of DNN. You should take that into account when you are doing your module development, if you compile your module against an older version of DNN then your module should run on newer versions of as well, for example. If you compile your module against DotNetNuke 6.2.6 it will likely run on every version of DNN released since then. Though there are extended cases where this won’t always work, DNN strives to maintain backwards compatibility, this isn't always possible.
You might also want to use features that are only available starting with a specific version of DotNetNuke, such as the workflow functionality found starting in DNN 5.1, in that case you may choose not to support older versions of the platform out of necessity. This will minimize the market in which you can sell your modules, but also can make for less support and an easier development cycle due to the features that DNN provides.
Choosing a Package
Now here’s one that may baffle you a bit. I’m going to recommend that you use the INSTALL package for whatever version of DotNetNuke that you download. What? The INSTALL package? What about the SOURCE package? Well you can use the source, but you don’t need it. The module development that I’m setting you up for doesn't require the DNN source, and using the INSTALL package makes your development environment cleaner. We aren't going to be opening the DotNetNuke project when we do our module development, so why have the files sitting around for nothing? Also, if you've ever tried to use the SOURCE package for anything, you'll know it isn't easy.
The steps for setting up your development environment will apply to both the Community and Professional editions of DotNetNuke.
Installation Configuration
Once you have the version selection out of the way you can go through the installation process. While I’m not going to walk you through the minutest of details of each step of installing DotNetNuke in this post, I will at least try to point you in the right direction for each step.
Download the INSTALL package of the version of DotNetNuke you want to use in your development environment.
Extract the files in the INSTALL package to a location of your choosing, this location is where you will point IIS (the web server) when we can configure the website. In my environment I typically use c:\websites\dnndev.me\ (One item of note: you may need to right click on the ZIP file and choose Properties before extracting, on the properties window if you have an UNBLOCK option, click that. Some versions of Windows have started blocking files within the DotNetNuke ZIP files, which will cause you problems later during the actual install.)
Setup IIS
IIS is the web server that comes with Windows computers. DNN 7 requires IIS 7 or later (7,7.5,8.0), so you will need at least Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012.
In IIS you should create a new website (Note: If you use an existing website in IIS be sure to add the HOST binding for DNNDEV.ME), and point to the folder where you extracted the INSTALL package.
Note: With DotNetNuke 7.0+, .NET Framework 4.0 is required, so be sure that your application pool is configured to run under 4.0, and not 2.0.
Set File Permissions
Setting up the file permissions for your DNN install is often the step that causes the most trouble. You should right click on the FOLDER in which you extracted DNN (c:\websites\dnndev.me) and choose properties. Choose the Security tab. You need to add permissions for the account in which your website's application pool is running under. You will want to setup the permissions to give the account Full or Modify permissions for the DNNDEV.ME folder. Which account you will use will vary based on your version of IIS, here’s a simple list of some of the default accounts based on the version of IIS.
IIS Version Operating System Account
IIS 7 Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 localmachine\Network Service
IIS 7.5 Windows 2008 R2, Windows 7 IIS AppPool\APPPOOLNAME
IIS 8 Windows 2012, Windows 8 IIS AppPool\APPPOOLNAME
Note: If you are using IIS7.5/8.0 you’ll notice in the above table that we have APPPOOLNAME in the identity, this is because when you setup a new website in IIS a new application pool is created. In place of you should type in the name of the application pool that was created. You can also bypass this and configure your application pool to use the Network Service account instead of a dynamic account if you would like.
Database Configuration
In SQL Server you should go through and create a new database. I always create a database with the same name as the website, so in this case DNNDEV.ME. Once you have created the database, create a user that can access that database. I always use SQL authentication, turn off the enforce password requirements, and give the user DB Owner and Public access to the DNNDEV.ME database. Remember the username and password you create here as you will need them when you walk through the Installation screen for DotNetNuke.
DotNetNuke Installation Screen
Populate the installation screen with the standard DNN information, Host username, password, etc. For the Database option, choose Custom and configure your database connection, providing the Server IP/Name, the Database name (dnndev.me). For the database authentication you'll want to choose the option that allows you to enter the username/password for the database user that you created previously.
Now there are two additional options you can configure, normally I would tell you not to modify these, but from a development environment perspective I do recommend that you change the objectQualifier setting. It should be blank by default, you should type in “dnn” (without quotes), this will prepend “dnn_” to all of the objects that get created by DNN such as Tables and Stored Procedures. This is not something I recommend from a production stand point, but if you are developing modules for sale, then supporting objectQualifier in your development is recommended. It will save you time down the road if you have a customer who has an objectQualifier defined on their production databases.
DotNetNuke Module Development
To get started with your DNN module development, be sure to read our tutorial on how to install our Module Development Templates.
Next, setup Visual Studio Templates (you'll want to use VS 2015) and create a project.
You can find the templates here https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/bdd506ef-d5c3-4274-bf1d-9e673fb23484
Download that, run the VSIX package installer, or search through the online templates for DotNetNuke. Watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOoQJDeTlJ0&list=PLFpEtny5sIbb9jGxJ7RBM5hIizodOCtoj&index=1
I'm thinking of a good deployment strategy for magento. I already have managed to deploy code with git from my local installation to my stage server. (The jump to live is not a problem then)
Now I'm thinking about how to deploy backend changes like the following:
I'm adding a new attribute set and I want it to be available on my stage and later the live server. Since these settings are in the database, I could just do a mysqldump and restore this dump on my stage/live systems.
But I can't do this, since the database has more data like orders, articles (with current stock availability) and a lot more stuff which I don't want to deploy from my testing system.
How are others handling this deployment "problem"?
After some testing, I chose the extension Mageploy, which is nicely to install via modman (I prefer modgit which relies on the same data for installation) and already captures a lot important backend settings.
If you need more, it's possible to extend it to more backend settings by yourself (and then contribute to the git project. Pullrequests are concidered quickly)
Our team develops distributed winform apps. We use ClickOnce for deployment and are very pleased with it.
However, we've found the pain point with ClickOnce is in creating the deployments. We have the standard dev/test/production environments and need to be able to create deployments for each of these that install and update separate from one another. Also, we want control over what assemblies get deployed. Just because an assembly was compiled doesn't mean we want it deployed.
The obvious first choice for creating deployments is Visual Studio. However, VS really doesn't address the issues stated. The next in line is the SDK tool, Mage. Mage works OK but creating deployments is rather tedious and we don't want every developer having our code signing certificate and password.
What we ended up doing was rolling our own deployment app that uses the command line version of Mage to create the ClickOnce manifest files.
I'm satisfied with our current solution but is seems like there would be an industry-wide, accepted approach to this problem. Is there?
I would look at using msbuild. It has built in tasks for handling clickonce deployments. I included some references which will help you get started, if you want to go down this path. It is what I use and I have found it to fit my needs. With a good build process using msbuild, you should be able to accomplish squashing the pains you have felt.
Here is detailed post on how ClickOnce manifest generation works with MsBuild.
I've used nAnt to run the overall build strategy, but pass parameters into MSBuild to compile and create the deployment package.
Basically, nAnt calls into MSBuild for each environment you need to deploy to, and generates a separate deployment output for each. You end up with a folder and all ClickOnce files you need for every environment, which you can just copy out to the server.
This is how we handled multiple production environments as well -- we had separate instances of our application for the US, Canada, and Europe, so each build would end up creating nine deployments, three each for dev, qa, and prod.