Deploy First Application

Create a sample application and deploy it with a CI pipeline

Overview

The Developer Environment supports end-to-end development and deployment of an application. The instructions below will show you how to do it.

You can create a new app using one of the Code Patterns. These have been created to include all the key components, configuration, and frameworks to get you started on creating the code you need for your solutions. The approach for getting started is exactly the same for an environment based on Kubernetes or Red Hat OpenShift.

Note: The instructions provided below lean heavily on the use of the IGC CLI to both show how the CLI works in context and to streamline the process (the reason for creating the CLI in the first place). However, the use of the CLI is in no way required to use the Cloud-Native Toolkit.If you would prefer to work through these instructions without the use of the CLI, we have provided the equivalent manual steps for each command on the Cloud Native Toolkit CLI page.

This video demonstrates how to work through the steps to create an application and use a deployment pipeline to install it into your development cluster.

Play

1. Log into your Development Cluster from the command line

Make sure you have installed all the Prerequisite Dev Tools before continuing
Log in to the development cluster’s CLI (Kubernetes or Red Hat OpenShift)
To do so, navigate to your cluster in the IBM Cloud console, click on the Access tab, and follow the instructions in After your cluster provisions, gain access section to log in to the cluster from the command line
You can test that you’re connected to the cluster with the following simple command:
```
oc get pods -n tools
```
NOTE: In case, your workshop is on Code Ready Workspaces,follow the steps in Code Ready Workspaces Setup before logging in to the cluster.

2. Create the development namespace

Before getting started, the development namespace/project needs to be created and prepared for the DevOps pipelines.
This is something that would typically happen once at the beginning of a project as a development team is formed and assigned to the cluster.
```
oc sync {DEV_NAMESPACE} --dev
```

3. Open the Developer Dashboard

The Developer Dashboard makes it easy for you to navigate to the tools, including a section that allows you to select a set of preconfigured Code Patterns that make seeding your development project very easy.

If you are logged into the OpenShift console you can select the tools menu and select Developer Dashboard
If you are on a laptop/desktop Open a browser and make sure you are logged into Github

4. Create your app in Git

From the Developer Dashboard, click on Code Patterns tab
Warning: If you are developing on a shared education cluster, you need to make it easy to identify your app. Please suffix the app name with your initials {app name}-{your initials} (e.g. stockbffnode-mjp) and use the Git Organization for the shared environment.
Warning: Your browser needs to be logged in to your GitHub account for a template to work. If the link from the tile displays the GitHub 404 page, log in and reload the page.
Pick one of the templates that is a good architectural fit for your application and the language and framework that you prefer to work with. For your first application select the Typescript Microservice. This works well in the Cloud Shell as well.
Click on a Code Pattern Tile to create your app github repository from the template repository selected. You can also click on the Git Icon to browse the source template repository and click on the Template to create the template
Complete the GitHub create repository from template process.
Owner: Select a valid GitHub organization that you are authorized to create repositories within or the one you were given for the shared cluster (See warning above)
Repository name: Enter a valid name for you repo, GitHub will help with showing a green tick if it is valid (See warning above)
Description: Describe your app
Press Create repository from template
The new repository will be created in your selected organization.

5. Clone your code

Next, clone it to your local machine.
Click on Clone or download

Copy the clone HTTPS link, and use the git clone command to clone it to your terminal.

git clone https://github.com/gsi-ecosystem-demo/stockbffnode-mjp.git

You will be required to enter your GitHub User ID and use your Git Hub Personal Access Token as your password. This will complete the clone of your git repository.
Change into the cloned directory
```
cd stockbffnode
```
You must rename the app to match your git repo or to a unique name for your solution. Then applications move into a test environment they need to unique names.
Edit package.json and edit the name: field and change it from its template name to your chosen name.
Save the edits

Push the changes back to your repository

git add .
git commit -m "Update application name"
git push

You will be required to enter your GitHub User ID and use your Git Hub Personal Access Token as your password. This will push your changes back to the repository.

Running the Application

6. Run the application

Most developers like to run the code natively in local development environment. To do so, follow the instructions listed in the README.md file to run the code locally.

For the inside the folder for the code cloned from GitHub, run the following command to install the Node.js dependencies.
```
npm install
```
Then you can run the app from inside your cloud shell.
```
npm run start
```

- Open a browser to `http://localhost:3000/api-docs/`

To view the running app click on the Eye Icon on the top right and select the port 3000 this will open a browser tab and display the running app on that port.

You can try out the sample API that is provided with this Code Pattern
You can now add new features and function from inside the Cloud Shell and experiment with your code before you push you changes back to git.

7. Set the namespace context

Before running these remainder of the instructions commands it is important to set the namespace/project context. (Notes: The kubernetes command will work for both openshift and kubernetes.)

oc project {DEV_NAMESPACE}

kubectl config set-context --current --namespace={DEV_NAMESPACE}

8. Register the App in a DevOps Pipeline

Up to this point you have the code in a GitHub repository and have cloned it to you local development environment. You now need to register the repository with the continuous integration pipeline. The Developer Environment supports both Tekton and Jenkins for continuous integration.

Start the process to create a pipeline
```
oc pipeline
```
The pipeline command give an option for both Jenkins and Tekton. For more information about working with the different build engines, please see Continuous Integration with Jenkins Guide and Continuous Integration with Tekton Guide
For the deployment of your first app with OpenShift select Tekton as the chosen CI engine.
The first time a pipeline is registered in the namespace, the CLI will ask for a username and Personal Access Token for the Git repository that will be stored in a secret named git-credentials. It will also ask for the branch that should be used for the pipeline.
Username: Enter your GitHub user id
Personal Access Token: Paste your GitHub personal access token
Branch: Press enter for the default git branch or type in another branch you want to register
When registering a Tekton pipeline, you will be prompted to select which pipeline you want to use for your application. If you selected Node based Code Pattern select the Node pipeline. If you selected Java select the Gradle pipeline.

For the first app select the igc-nodejs-v1.x.0 version of the pipeline. This will use the Node based CI pipeline with Tekton.

? Select the Pipeline to use in the PipelineRun: (Use arrow keys)❯
 igc-appmod-liberty-v1-2-0
 igc-java-gradle-v1-2-0
 igc-java-maven-v1-2-0
 igc-nodejs-v1-2-0
 Skip PipelineRun creation

When registering a Jenkins pipeline, the CLI will also set up a webhook with the git host
Note: if the webhook registration step fails it is likely because the Git credentials are incorrect or do not have enough permission in the repository
The pipeline will be registered in your development cluster.

9. View your application pipeline

The steps to view your registered pipeline will vary based on type of pipeline (Jenkins or Tekton) and container platform version (IKS, OCP 3.11, or OCP 4.3).

Open the OpenShift Web Console from the Developer Cluster instance
From menu on the left switch to the Developer mode
Select dev project that was used for the application pipeline registration
In the left menu, select Pipelines
You will see your application dev ops pipeline now starting to build and once completed will look like the image below.

Open the OpenShift Web Console from the Developer Cluster instance
From the left-hand menu, select Builds -> Build Configs
Select your project from the drop-down menu at the top
The registered pipeline should appear in the list

Run the command oc dashboard in your terminal to open your Developer Dashboard.
Select the Jenkins tool to open the Jenkins dashboard
Run the command oc credentials in your terminal to get the list of logins for the tools
Use the Jenkins userid and password to log into the Jenkins dashboard

Wait for the pipeline stages to start building. Once the stages have completed, you will see a view similar to the one below.

10. Access the running app

Once the pipeline has completed successfully, the app will be deployed into the namespace used when registering the pipeline. To validate the app is running follow these steps:

Note: Be sure the namespace context is set correctly before running the following commands - set the namespace context

Retrieve the app ingress endpoint using commands below in your terminal.
```
oc endpoints
```
From the endpoints listed, select the URL for the repo that was just deployed and press Enter to open that URL in a web browser and validate the application is working as expected

11. Locate the app in the web console

The build pipeline is configured to build the source code from the Git repository into a container image. This image is stored in the Image Registry. After that the image is deployed into the same namespace/project within development cluster where the pipeline ran and validated for its health. The steps below will walk through locating the installed application within the Web Console.

Open the OpenShift web console
Change to the Developer view
Click on Topology menu
Click on your application deployment in the topology view
Click on on the Overview tab
Increase the number of running pods
Click Resource tab and then on the pod View Logs link
You can see the running state of your application

Open the OpenShift web console
Change to the Application Console
Select you project either dev or the namespace you used to deploy your app
Click on Deployments
You should see the deployment of your application
Click on your application, and the corresponding deployment number
Try increasing the number of pods to see new instances being provisioned
Click on one of the pod instances
Click on Logs
You can see the running state of your application -. Navigate around the console to understand where your deployment, service and pods are running

Open the Kubernetes Dashboard
Change to the namespace from default to either dev or the namespace you used to deploy your app
Click on Deployments
You should see the deployment of your application
Click on your application , and the corresponding Replica Set
Try scaling the application, click on Scale in the header, change number of pods to 2 and click OK
Click on one of the pod instances
Click on Logs
You can see the running state of your application
Navigate around the console to understand where your deployment, service and pods are running

Success: You will now have your application running inside your development cluster and beig delivered using a Tekton based CI pipeline, this is beginning of the developer journey with IBM Cloud

Having reached this point, we recommend you repeat the process a few more times using different Code Patterns templates and explore the Developer view in OpenShift to get familiar with it.

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