NAME

       Jifty::Manual::Deploying - Deploying your application for production use

DESCRIPTION

       This document is intended to answer two questions:

       •   Now that you've developed your Jifty application, how do you deploy it on the production server?

       •   Once deployed, what's the process for performing upgrades to the production server?

       Developers and administrators may wish to use this document as a checklist to make sure they hit
       everything when deploying. This document should be updated according to the best practices of Jifty
       deployment to aid this end.

HOW TO

   Installing on a Production Server
       Once you've finished developing your Jifty application and you want to deploy it for use on a production
       server you'll need to follow these steps:

       1.  Install Jifty on your production server.

       2.  Copy your application onto the production server.

       3.  Adjust the configuration to suit your production environment.

       4.  Deploy your production database.

       5.  Configure your web server.

       6.  Start using your production service.

       Install Jifty

       Jifty installation proceeds just as it did on your development machine (or machines). If you installed
       from CPAN, you may do the same for your production server.

         perl -MCPAN -e 'install Jifty'

       or download Jifty and run:

         tar zxf Jifty-VERSION.tar.gz
         cd Jifty-VERSION
         perl Makefile.PL
         make
         make test
         sudo make install

       You may also have installed it via the package manager available for your Linux distribution.

       Finally, you may want to use bleeding-edge features available only in the Jifty Subversion repository.
       This has a slightly higher risk, but this is what the Best Practical team does for their Jifty
       applications. When doing this, you will probably want to be sure to check out the exact same version as
       you are using on your development machines.

       Be sure to run the tests when installing Jifty to make sure there aren't any problems on your production
       server that you need to fix before deploying your application.

       Copy the Application

       After you've gotten Jifty deployed, you need to copy your application onto the server. This can be done
       in whatever way suits your project. You can run your Jifty application straight out of the development
       directory just as you have on testing. Just place the directory into an appropriate location on your
       server.

       It may be advisable to consider using a version control system, such as SVK or Subversion, to aid you in
       this process. For example, with either SVK or Subversion, any production customizations can be handled as
       branches of your application to help you keep those changes sorted out clearly. This can also help you if
       you make any tweaks to the code on the production server that need to be put back into your development.

       Here is an example of how to create the branch in Subversion or. This example is built upon in the
       "Upgrading the Production Server" section below.

       All these commands are assumed to be running on the production server in this example, but you could do
       much of these from anywhere.

         svn mkdir http://svn.example.com/myapp/branches
         svn copy http://svn.example.com/myapp/trunk \
                  http://svn.example.com/myapp/branches/production
         svn checkout http://svn.example.com/myapp/branches/production \
                      myapp
         cd myapp

       Make sure to remember (possibly by recording it in the log messages) which revision your trunk was at
       when you ran the copy command. This will be important later. If you're using SVK rather than Subversion,
       you don't have to worry about this.

       In SVK:

         svk mkdir //myapp/branches
         svk copy //myapp/trunk //myapp/branches/production
         svk checkout //myapp/branches/production myapp
         cd myapp

       You will now have a copy of the latest version of your project in the directory named myapp. You can then
       make any of the modifications you need to to get your application configured for the production
       environment (read the following sections for details).

       When you're finished, commit those changes to the branch:

         svn commit

       or in SVK:

         svk commit

       All of these changes will be made only to the production branch. In the upgrade section, it will be
       clearer how this will help you.

       Tweak the Configuration

       After you've copied your application onto the server, change into that directory and make any changes to
       your configuration required for production.

       Put all your site-specific changes in etc/site_config.yml and never edit etc/config.yml, as it will be
       overwritten with the next application update.

       Here are some things you'll want to consider changing:

       AdminMode
           While developing, you'll probably want to try running your application with this turned off. This
           turns on the administrative functions for managing models, data, and actions.

           Set this to 0 to turn it off.

       Database
           These settings will be covered in more detail in "Deploy the Database".

       DevelMode
           This turns off certain checks that slow down a production system but are vital to fast development.
           For example, with ever request to a server with "DevelMode" turned on, the server checks to see if
           any of the library or template files have changed and reloads them, if this is turned on.

           By switching this setting off, you also enable extra caching and speed-up features including the use
           of CSS::Squish, which helps your application load CSS files more quickly.

       LogConfig
           You may wish to add this option to specify a custom logger configuration. See Jifty::Logger.

       LogLevel
           Depending on your environment, you may want to adjust the default log level or you may want to
           customize the log configuration by introducing an etc/log4perl.conf configuration file.

           You can set the LogLevel to: DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, or FATAL to specify the level. If you want a
           custom log configuration for your server (allowing you to have per-module log settings among other
           features), you need to set "LogConfig" and possibly "LogReload". See Jifty::Logger

           This configuration setting is overridden by the JIFTY_LOG_LEVEL environment variable (if set).

       LogReload
           This allows you specify a custom reload period for your log configuration, if you use "LogConfig".
           See Jifty::Logger.

       Mailer
           In some cases you will want to adjust the mailer configuration used by Jifty. The mail configuration
           is used whenever Jifty::Notification messages are sent, which may or may not be used by your
           application.

           If you change the "Mailer" setting, be sure to also change "MailerArgs" to match.

           See Jifty::Notification and Email::Send.

       MailerArgs
           You may want to adjust the configuration of the mailer you are using. See Jifty::Notification and
           Email::Send.

       Plugins
           You may want to disable plugins you've been using in your development that you don't need in
           production. In general, if these plugins are well-behaved this isn't necessary, but you can provide
           yourself with extra insurance in case they are not.

           You can disable them without removing them from the file by commenting them out using the Perl-style
           "#" comment mark.

       Web
           BaseURL
               You will want to change the "BaseURL" setting under "Web" to make sure it shows the name of your
               production server's base URL.

           ServeStaticFiles
               If you want to improve the performance of your server, you may want your main web server to serve
               static files rather than having Jifty do it. You will need to manually flatten the static file
               structure yourself for this to work, but it can be done.

       etc.
           Your application configuration may have additional changes that need to be made for your application
           to operate properly in a production environment.

           Make sure to check over all the settings to make sure they will work in your production environment
           to save yourself headaches later.

       Deploy the Database

       If you've been developing your server using the default SQLite configuration, you will likely want to
       change this for your production server. SQLite might work for production environment, but chances are it
       will not.

       For your production system, you will probably want to modify the "Driver" to suit your production
       environment. For example, if you were going to change to use a MySQL server, you might change your
       "Database" configuration in etc/site_config.yml to something like this:

         Database:
           Database: myapp
           Driver: mysql
           Host: mysql.example.com
           Password: 'secret'
           RecordBaseClass: Jifty::DBI::Record::Cachable
           User: myapp_user
           Version: 0.0.1

       In this example, the server is running the MySQL driver, connecting to the host at "mysql.example.com"
       with the username "myapp_user" and password "secret".

       You will need to create the database and grant access to the users according to your RDBMS administrator
       documentation. In MySQL, this could be done to match the example above by running these commands:

         mysqladmin -uadmin -psecret create myapp
         mysql -uadmin -psecret -e "grant all on myapp.\* to myapp_user'@'myapp.example.com identified by 'secret'"

       Please refer to your RDBMS documentation for full details on how to configure your database.

       Configure the Web Server

       There are several ways to configure your web server. You can use FastCGI or mod_perl or you can use a
       proxy to the Jifty simple server. The first two options are what you will most likely want to do, but the
       proxy configuration is presented for completeness.

       Configuring FastCGI

       Several configurations are explained by the "fastcgi" in Jifty::Script::FastCGI script that comes with
       Jifty. It is recommended that you take one of those and modify the configuration to suit your needs.

       It may take a few tries to get the configuration exactly right. Be sure to check the server logs for your
       web server when looking for problems.

       Configuring mod_perl

       Support for mod_perl version 2.0 is provided by Jifty::Script::ModPerl2. Remember that you need to
       completely stop and start the Apache server after the Perl modules in your application are changed.

       Configuring a Proxy

       You can use a proxy with the built-in server. This can be done with the following configuration in
       Apache:

         <Location />
         ProxyPass        / http://localhost:8888/
         ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8888/
         </Location>

       Place that declaration in your main configuration or virtual host configuration file and then whenever
       you run:

         bin/jifty server

       Apache will proxy your server on port 80 for you. This may not work exactly as expected because the
       built-in server is intended for testing, not for a production environment. As such, it is not well-tested
       as a production server.

       Configure File Permissions

       The <var/> subdirectory in your application should be writable by the server process. If it runs as non-
       root UID (for example, FastCGI and Apache processes are usually running under the user named apache or
       www or something alike), you need to change the group or user permissions for this directory.

       For example, assume your application will run under user apache and group apache. Then the following
       commands should do the job:

         chgrp -R apache var
         chmod -R g+w var

       A more flexible way would be to create a new group myapp and add apache user in it. This allows you to
       maintain the application from non-root login and use "sudo" for restarting Apache.

       All Systems Go

       Once you have done all of the above, your application should be ready to use at the production address
       you have configured.

   Updating the Production Server
       After you've made some collection of updates to your Jifty application, you'll then need to install those
       changes onto your server and prepare your application to use the changes.

       This documentation assumes a "cold" upgrade with the application offline during the duration of the
       process. A future version of this document might also include instructions for performing a "hot" upgrade
       without taking the server offline.

       You can do this with the following steps:

       1.  Shutdown the application.

       2.  Update the Jifty installation.

       3.  Update your Jifty application.

       4.  Merge in configuration changes.

       5.  Clean up any temporary and cached files.

       6.  Upgrade your database.

       7.  Start using the updated application.

       Shutdown the Application

       This process cannot be performed on a live server. If it is, bad things may happen. You may choose to
       shutdown the application in one of two ways: turn off your web server or reconfigure your web server into
       an offline mode.

       Remember, shutdown all Jifty application processes before continuing, or bad things may happen!

       Shutting Down the Server

       This will involve a two step process. First, you will want to shutdown your web server. The second is to
       shutdown the Jifty server. If you are using the built-in Jifty server, you may do this by running:

         bin/jifty server --stop

       If you are using FastCGI, you will need to locate your server's process IDs and then kill all the
       processes. If this is the only FastCGI and Perl script running on your system, you may be able to just
       run:

         killall perl

       However, that might stop too many processes in many environments, so you'll just have to find the
       processes and clean them up as suits your server.

       Offline Mode

       If you want to provide you site visitors with some feedback letting them know that the web site is down,
       you might want to provide an alternative configuration for your application. You still need to stop all
       your Jifty application processes when you engage the offline configuration.

       For example, you could have the following configuration on an Apache server to run an offline mode:

         <Location />
         RewriteEngine on
         RewriteRule ^.*$ /offline.html
         </Location>

       Then create a file named "offline.html" in your server root containing the message you wish to give your
       visitors.

       You can make this configuration change and then restart your web server to give it effect. Then, stop all
       the Jifty application processes.

       Update Jifty

       This is exactly the same as "Install Jifty" above. Again, you'll probably want to install the same
       version as you are using to developing with. If you have not made any changes to the Jifty version you
       are using, you may skip this step.

       Update the Application

       This is again similar to what you've done above. You just need to update all the files that have changed.
       However, you should be careful not to clobber any configuration changes that you need to remember.

       If you've used the suggestion of using a branch described above, you can automatically update your
       production server to use the latest code without risk of clobbering your changes on the production
       server.

       In Subversion, you will first need to recall the revision of either the initial copy or of the last merge
       you performed. If you stored this information in the log message, you can retrieve it by running:

         svn log http://svn.example.com/myapp/branches/production

       When you have the revision number, you can then merge in all the latest changes in your production server
       copy. Here, I assume that the revision number is "1234".

         cd myapp
         svn merge -r 1234:HEAD http://svn.example.com/myapp/trunk .

       If you're using SVK, you can just run the following:

         cd myapp
         svk smerge //myapp/trunk .

       SVK automatically remembers the revision number for you so you don't have to worry about it.

       Next, watch for any conflicts that might have occurred and be sure to correct them. Check over all the
       changed files and make sure they look alright and you should also run your tests again to be sure
       everything is working. Once you're sure everything is correct, you can accept the changes with:

         svn commit

       or:

         svk commit

       Your code should now be ready.

       Configuration Changes

       Again, you need to look for any configuration updates that need to adjusted. This is no different from
       the process during the initial installation.

       Clear Temporary/Cached Files

       This step is important to prevent strange issues from occurring. You remove all files from the following
       directories:

       •   var/mason/cache

       •   var/mason/obj

       You can run the following command (BE CAREFUL TO TYPE THIS CORRECTLY OR PAY THE CONSEQUENCES):

         rm -rf var/mason/{cache,obj}/*

       This means that your application will have to rebuild these cached files, which will slow your
       application down slightly at first.

       However, if these files are left in place, the Mason server may continue using cached versions of files
       that don't match your latest updates. This will lead to very strange problems.

       Upgrade the Database

       If you've made any changes to the database schema or to the structure of your data that requires an
       upgrade, you will need to run:

         bin/jifty schema --setup

       See Jifty::Manual::Upgrading.

       All Systems Go

       Now that all these changes have been made, you are ready to start your web server or reconfigure your web
       server for production mode and restart.

SEE ALSO

       Jifty::Manual::Tutorial, Jifty::Manual::Upgrading