Deployment

Using Docker

Create a PostgreSQL Instance (Optional)

If you have a PostgreSQL database instance configured and running you can skip this section.

Start a PostgreSQL database instance using docker:

docker run --rm --name activeworkflow-db \

-e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=activeworkflowpassword \

-e POSTGRES_USER=activeworkflow \

-v activeworkflow-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data \

-d docker.io/postgres

This starts a database with the username/password you provided and mounts a docker volume (activeworkflow-data) so your data is preserved during runs.

You can stop the database with:

docker stop activeworkflow-db

Run ActiveWorkflow Using the Official Docker Image

The default ActiveWorkflow instance consists of three containers: web, scheduler and worker. You can run ActiveWorkflow using the official docker image with:

docker run --rm --name activeworkflow-web \

--link activeworkflow-db:postgres \

-e DATABASE_URL=postgres://activeworkflow:activeworkflowpassword@postgres/active_workflow

-e SECRET_KEY_BASE=secretrandomstring \

-e CREATE_DATABASE=true \

-e DISABLE_SSL=true \

-p 3000:3000 \

-d docker.io/automaticmode/active_workflow

docker run --rm --name activeworkflow-scheduler \

--link activeworkflow-db:postgres \

-e DATABASE_URL=postgres://activeworkflow:activeworkflowpassword@postgres/active_workflow

-e SECRET_KEY_BASE=secretrandomstring \

-e CREATE_DATABASE=true \

-e DISABLE_SSL=true \

-d docker.io/automaticmode/active_workflow bundle exec rails runner bin/scheduler.rb

docker run --rm --name activeworkflow-worker \

--link activeworkflow-db:postgres \

-e DATABASE_URL=postgres://activeworkflow:activeworkflowpassword@postgres/active_workflow

-e SECRET_KEY_BASE=secretrandomstring \

-e CREATE_DATABASE=true \

-e DISABLE_SSL=true \

-d docker.io/automaticmode/active_workflow bundle exec script/delayed_job -n 2 run

For convenience you can gather all the environment variable definitions in a single file, for example activeworkflow.env:

DATABASE_URL=postgres://activeworkflow:activeworkflowpassword@postgres/active_workflow

SECRET_KEY_BASE=secretrandomstring

CREATE_DATABASE=true

DISABLE_SSL=true

And then start ActiveWorkflow with:

docker run --rm --name activeworkflow-web \

--link activeworkflow-db:postgres \

--env-file activeworkflow.env

-p 3000:3000 \

-d docker.io/automaticmode/active_workflow

docker run --rm --name activeworkflow-scheduler \

--link activeworkflow-db:postgres \

--env-file activeworkflow.env

-d docker.io/automaticmode/active_workflow bundle exec rails runner bin/scheduler.rb

docker run --rm --name activeworkflow-worker \

--link activeworkflow-db:postgres \

--env-file activeworkflow.env

-d docker.io/automaticmode/active_workflow bundle exec script/delayed_job -n 2 run

The above commands assume that you have a PostgreSQL instance in a docker container named activeworkflow-db and that you link it to ActiveWorkflow. If your database is hosted differently edit the --link line accordingly and/or omit it and use the corresponding DATABASE_URL environment variable.

ActiveWorkflow is configured by default with user admin and password password and is accessible using a web browser on http://localhost:3000.

You can stop ActiveWorkflow with:

docker stop activeworkflow-web activeworkflow-scheduler activewrorkflow-worker

!Note: For production deployment we strongly recommend you to use a web server (like nginx or Apache) to provide an SSL front. The DISABLE_SSL variable allows AcitveWorkflow to run without SSL encryption and should be omitted for production.

Using docker-compose

You can also run ActiveWorkflow using docker-compose. For this you need a docker-compose.yml and a .env file with environment variables. Please edit these according to your requirements. You can read more about supported environment variables in the Environment section below.

You can then run ActiveWorkflow with:

docker-compose up

You can stop it with:

docker-compose down

This setup has a PostgreSQL database included.

Environment Variables

ActiveWorkflow tries to follow the best practices of a 12 factor app. You can configure your ActiveWorkflow instance by setting environment variables. The following environment variables are supported:

• DATABASE_USERNAME, DATABASE_PASSWORD, DATABASE_HOST and DATABASE_NAME are self-explanatory credentials required to establish a connection to the PostgreSQL database.

• DATABASE_URL substitutes all of the above environment variables and could be used for convenience. It has the format postgres://{username}:{password}@{hostname}/{database_name}, where {} should replaced by corresponding values.

• CREATE_DATABASE should be true for the web process to create a database. Usually it is used during the first run if you haven't created a database instance in advance. It is idempotent, so it can be given even if a database has been already created.

• DO_NOT_MIGRATE should be true to skip database migrations. By default the ActiveWorkflow web process runs database migration scripts to update the database schema to the latest version.

• DO_NOT_SEED should be true to avoid seeding a database. By default the ActiveWorkflow web process creates a new user and a simple example workflow. The seed user is configured by using the environment variables described below.

• SEED_EMAIL, SEED_USERNAME and SEED_PASSWORD are the credentials of the user that the ActiveWorkflow web process should create (unless DO_NOT_SEED is set to true). Created user is made an admin. If a user with the provided email already exists, the operation is skipped. If these variables are not set ActiveWorkflow creates a user admin with password password and email admin@example.com.

• SECRET_KEY_BASE is a random string used to encrypt data, specifically session information.

• AGENT_LOG_LENGTH defines how many log entries per entries to keep. 200 log entries are kept if this variable is undefined.

• PORT is the port where the ActiveWorkflow web process should listen on.

• DISABLE_SSL could be set to true when testing by using direct connection on localhost. For production you should use some web server to provide an SSL front (like nginx or Apache) and leave DISABLE_SSL unset.

• WEB_CONCURRENCY, RAILS_MAX_THREADS define how many processes and threads should the web process use to serve requests.

• SMTP_DOMAIN, SMTP_SERVER, SMTP_PORT, SMTP_AUTHENTICATION ('none' or 'plain'), SMTP_SSL (false or true), SMTP_USER_NAME, SMTP_PASSWORD are all used for SMTP configuration.

• SMTP_ENABLE_STARTTLS_AUTO - you may need to set this to true for some servers.

• SMTP_OPENSSL_VERIFY_MODE - use peer for production or none for testing.

How to Build Your Own Docker Image

You can build your own docker image of ActiveWorkflow by checking out the ActiveWorkflow repository and using docker build command:

git clone https://github.com/automaticmode/active_workflow.git

cd active_workflow

docker build -t {yourname}/active_workflow .