100-day Challenge #081: Running Rocket.Chat on Cloud Foundry

Translator’s note: This is the 18th article of the series “Cloud Foundry 100-day Challenge selection”. “#081” in the title means that it is 81st (published on October 19, 2015) in the original Japanese series.

Original Author: Takeshi MORIKAWA (GitHub) (company)

The 81st topic of “Cloud Foundry 100-Day Challenge” is a Meteor-based chat tool, Rocket.Chat.
Meteor is a Node.js full-stack reactive framework, and this is the first Meteor-based application picked up in the 100-Day Challenge series.
Its look and feel is very modern, much like Let’s Chat which we have discussed in the past.

Basic Information

Official site
http://rocket.chat/
Source code
https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat
Other reference
Rocket.Chat: an OSS that allows the creation of a chat space like Slack on the web (Translator’s note: In Japanese)

The summary of procedures is as follows:

1) Retrieving Source Code
2) Preparation
3) Starting Application
4) Checking Application Behavior

1. Retrieving Source Code

$ git clone https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat
$ cd Rocket.Chat

2. Preparation

2.1. Creating MongoDB Service Instance

$ cf create-service "Mongo DB" "Default Mongo Plan" rocket-mongo

2.2. Pushing Application

Let’s get the URL of the Meteor buildpack for RocketChat from app.json (the configuration file for Heroku Button).

$ cat appj.son
  "env": {
      "BUILDPACK_URL": "https://github.com/RocketChat/heroku-buildpack-meteor.git",

Then push the application with specifying the URL above for -b, and specifying 窶渡o-start.

$ cf push rocket -b https://github.com/RocketChat/heroku-buildpack-meteor.git --no-start

2.3. Binding Service

Let’s bind the created service instance to the application.

$ cf bind-service rocket rocket-mongo

2.4. Configuring Environment Variables

In order to obtain service information of the bound service, we run “cf env” and take note of the uri portion of the credentials.

$ cf env rocket
:
    "credentials": {
     "uri": "mongodb://68608217-650b-4b26-91df-e70ad5105a34:[email protected]:27017/f9d8d716-8426-42a6-bd62-585aecfe43d1"
    },

Then execute cf set-env to set the variable MONGO_URL to the value noted from the credentials.

$ cf set-env rocket MONGO_URL "mongodb://68608217-650b-4b26-91df-e70ad5105a34:[email protected]:27017/f9d8d716-8426-42a6-bd62-585aecfe43d1"

We also set the variable ROOT_URL to the application’s URL by cf set-env.

cf set-env rocket ROOT_URL https://rocket.10.244.0.34.xip.io

Moreover, we set the environment variables below.

cf set-env rocket NODE_ENV production
cf set-env rocket LCB_SECRETS_COOKIE secret

3. Starting Application

$ cf start rocket
:
 
App started
 
 
OK
 
App rocket was started using this command `.meteor/heroku_build/bin/node .meteor/heroku_build/app/main.js`
 
Showing health and status for app rocket in org develop / space develop-space as admin...
OK
 
requested state: started
instances: 1/1
usage: 256M x 1 instances
urls: rocket.10.244.0.34.xip.io
last uploaded: Fri Sep 18 01:28:14 UTC 2015
stack: cflinuxfs2
buildpack: https://github.com/RocketChat/heroku-buildpack-meteor.git
 
     state     since                    cpu    memory           disk      details
#0   running   2015-09-18 10:58:02 AM   0.0%   134.7M of 256M   0 of 1G

The application has started successfully.