Porting An Application To Silver Lining
=======================================

This describes some of the steps of taking an existing application and
"porting" it to Silver Lining.

First steps for a simple Python application
-------------------------------------------

Imagine you've been developing an application for a while, using your
Python framework of choice.  It doesn't matter much *what* framework
you used.  You might have to do a little cleanup to start:

* Make sure everything runs okay with Python 2.6.
* Make sure you've identified all your requirements.

It's not required to use a ``setup.py`` file or specify your
requirements in ``setup.py`` with ``install_requires``.  These files
are good practice, but not necessary.

Clean up your ``site-packages``
-------------------------------

Some people have installed things into their computer as root, e.g.,
by using ``sudo easy_install`` or ``sudo pip install``.  This is a bad
idea.  This will cause all sorts of weird problems and complications
for you, not just with Silver Lining but with everything.

I recommend deleting as much from ``/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages``
as you can.  I recommend *keeping* some select stable libraries like
PIL, or Database drivers (psycopg, MySQLdb, etc).

Create the file layout
----------------------

Now you are ready to create a location for storing your application.
With Silver Lining applications all the code and libraries are stored
in a single directory.  I usually name this directory ``mything-app``
(where ``mything`` is the name of my application).  So run::

    $ silver init mything-app
    $ cd mything-app
    $ source bin/activate

Now you have an activated `virtualenv
<http://virtualenv.openplans.org>`_ with some basic Silver Lining
layout, though no application.

Next, put your application in place::

    $ cd src
    $ hg/git/svn clone/checkout your-repository mything

If you already have your code checked out into, say, ``~/src/mything``
then unfortunately you'll either have to move it or deal with two
separate checkouts -- the code has to be physically located inside the
``mything-app`` directory, because only that directory will be
uploaded to the server.  Though you can *probably* do something like
this, but I haven't tried it::

    $ cd $VIRTUAL_ENV/src
    $ ln -s ~/src/mything mything

anyway, you probably want to do this work on a branch or separate
cloned repository.

Next create a new repository for your application's libraries.  You
won't install libraries during the regular workflow of developing
applications with Silver Lining, even if you are collaborating with
other developers or using multiple machines -- you'll only install
things when you've actually added, updated, or removed a library that
your application uses.  To do that you'll put all your *installed*
libraries in another repository.  You can do that like::

    $ cd $VIRTUAL_ENV/lib
    $ rm -r python
    $ hg init python

or use ``git init``, or create a repository and clone/check it out.
This repository will be separate from your main application.

Note that everything gets installed into ``lib/python/``, not into
``lib/python2.6/site-packages/`` (which exists, but won't be added
to).

Installing Stuff
----------------

Now you have some files in place, but nothing is really "installed".

If you have a ``setup.py`` file, then run::

    $ cd $VIRTUAL_ENV
    $ pip install -e src/mything/

This will make the package importable and install any requirements
you've specified.

If you *have not* written a ``setup.py`` file (common for Django
applications) then you'll have to make sure the appropriate directory
is on the path in a more manual fashion.  Let's say you want
``src/mything/`` directly on the path, then you'll do::

    $ cd $VIRTUAL_ENV/lib/python/
    $ echo ../../src/mything/ > mything.pth

If you need to install some additional things, go ahead now::

    $ pip install SomeLibrary

If you are developing a library concurrently with your application
then you should also check that library out into ``src/`` and use
``pip install -e``.

You should use **pip** specifically and not easy_install, as pip
cleans up after itself, uninstalling libraries and old versions of
libraries.

Non-Python Libraries
--------------------

If you have any libraries that you need that aren't pure-Python, you
should install them system-wide.  Ideally you should use your
operating system facilities to install these libraries (e.g.,
``apt-get install python-lxml``).

Make note of these libraries.  Database connection libraries will be
installed automatically, but any other libraries will have to be
explicitly added (more on that later).

Describe your application with ``app.ini``
------------------------------------------

Now you have to tell Silver Lining how to start up your application,
and possibly some other details.  This is done through a configuration
file ``app.ini`` in the root of your app.

There will be an example file in place.  You might just want to edit
it, making note of these settings::

    [production]
    app_name = mything
    runner = src/mything/silver-runner.py

Those are really the most important settings.  Also if you are using a
database (likely!) then find the appropriate line and uncomment it.
In our example we'll imagine you are using PostgreSQL::

    service.postgresql =

Note that you don't need any value there.  (Maybe someday there will
be a service that isn't just "enabled" but is actually configured, at
which point it will take some value.)

The most important thing you'll note is that now you have a "runner"
defined in ``src/mything/silver-runner.py``.  You better write that!

The specific code you'll use depends on your web framework.  This file
will basically look like a mod_wsgi ``.wsgi`` file: it's some Python
code that creates an object ``application``.

You shouldn't need to set up your path in this file.  In fact, you
shouldn't need to set up any of your environment, you just find the
application object.  You can also use a `Paste Deploy
<http://pythonpaste.org/deploy/>`_ ini file if you want (but even if
you are using a framework such as Pylons, you can if you want import
your ``make_app`` function directly and call it).

Here's an example for Django::

    import django.core.handlers.wsgi
    application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler()

Setting Up Your Environment
---------------------------

One nice thing about Silver Lining is that your environment can
*always* be setup.  That means, everything importable all the time,
everything configurable all the time, all data available.

To do this there is a specific file for you to customize (well, a file
for you to create): ``lib/python/silvercustomize.py`` (similar to
``sitecustomize.py``).

If you are using Django, you should do at least this::

    import os
    os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'mything.settings'

On other systems you might import or configure other things.  It is
preferable to put things here rather than in your runner, as this file
is always loaded, so it will be available in the interactive
interpreter, in tests, in scripts, etc.

Configuration
-------------

Silver Lining uses a different model of configuration than is
typically used.  You can, if you want, ignore configuration entirely
-- but this is about *porting* an application, so you certainly
haven't ignored configuration before.  So you need to adapt that
configuration.

Silver Lining tells the application about the environment through
`environmental variables <envvariables.html>`_ (``os.environ``).
These variables are *always* set.  So if you use a PostgreSQL database
you would look at these:

``os.environ['CONFIG_PG_DBNAME']``: the name of the database you
should connect to.

``os.environ['CONFIG_PG_HOST']``: the host of the database (empty
string means localhost).

``os.environ['CONFIG_PG_PORT']``: the port of the database (empty
string means default port).

``os.environ['CONFIG_PG_USER']``: the user to connect as.

``os.environ['CONFIG_PG_PASSWORD']``: the password to use (empty string
means no password).

``os.environ['CONFIG_PG_SQLALCHEMY']``: creating the SQLAlchemy
connection string from all these pieces is somewhat annoying, so this
does it for you.

These variables will be set both during local development and when
deployed, so you can always rely on them -- you don't need any special
conditionals.

``bin/``
--------

Yet to be written (it's kind of a pain currently).

Setting Up Your Database
------------------------

Now you have something that will *run*, but with a blank database.
That's probably not what you want.

You can tell Silver Lining to fetch a URL or call a script every time
an application is updated.  It is up to this script to do the right
thing -- to alter tables, to notice tables that already exists, etc.
All Silver Lining handles is fetching this program.

To do this, add a setting to ``app.ini``::

    [production]
    ...
    update_fetch = /update-database

That gets a URL, to call a script::

    update_fetch = script:bin/django-admin.py syncdb

You can have multiple entries, one per line (indent subsequent lines).

If you have to poke at a database remotely there's also a way to do
that, with ``silver run``.

These URLs or scripts will also be called everytime you start up the
application locally using ``silver serve``.

Static Files
------------

If you have static files in your application, they go in ``static/``.
They can (and should) be symlinks.  Note that ``static`` doesn't
appear in the URL; so if for example you have a convention that all
your static files go in ``http://example.com/static/`` then you
actually have to get the files into ``static/static/``.

So do something like::

    $ cd $VIRTUAL_ENV/static
    $ ln -s ../src/mything/mything/media media

For Django you might also symlink things from the admin media into a
location here, like::

    $ ln -s ../lib/python/django/contrib/admin/media admin-media

and in ``settings.py``::

    ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/admin-media/'

Non-Python Libraries
--------------------

Any non-Python libraries have to be installed in production as deb
packages.  For instance if you need lxml you'll need the
``python-lxml`` package installed.  You can get this to happen with
this addition to app.ini::

    packages =
        python-lxml

You can have multiple packages, one on each line.  This doesn't
include databases though!  (Well, SQLite is fine, as it runs
in-process.)

Testing It Out
--------------

You can run this application locally now, using::

    $ silver serve ~/src/mything-app/

This will run any URLs or scripts in ``update_fetch``, and serve up
the application at ``http://localhost:8080``.  If you edit any files
the server will restart to get the refreshed files.

Note that when running locally you have to do things like create
databases on your own.  You can also `customize the local
configuration <services.html#local-development-configuration>`_ (this
is done *outside* the application).

To test an actual deployment you need a server to deploy to.  Silver
Lining can deploy to any dedicated Ubuntu Lucid machine that has been
configured by Silver Lining (using ``silver setup-node``), but the
cloud makes getting a testing server very easy and quite cheap (when
testing, you can allocate a server just for a few hours for testing
before getting rid of it), so you might consider opening an account.


Problems
--------

Here are some problems you might encounter, with ideas for solutions:

I can't see errors
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Silver Lining doesn't do anything very useful with exceptions on its
own.  You should use whatever facilities your web framework has.
Projects like `weberror <http://bitbucket.org/bbangert/weberror/>`_
and `flickzeug <http://dev.pocoo.org/projects/flickzeug/>`_ are a
generic way of wrapping your application, and could be applied in the
runner.

To detect if you are in a production environment, you can use::

    from silversupport.env import is_production

    application = normal instantiation

    if not is_production():
        from flickzeug.debug import DebuggedApplication
        application = DebuggedApplication(application, evalex=True)

I need custom database setup
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you want to, you can do things more manually than just using
``update_fetch``.  One way is to use ``silver run``.  For instance,
instead of using ``script:bin/django-admin.py syncdb`` you can invoke
this manually on a server like::

    $ silver run mything-host.com django-admin.py syncdb

This command can be interactive.  There isn't good access directly to
commands like ``psql`` though.

I need a service that isn't supported
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Then write the code!  You can fork `the project
<http://bitbucket.org/ianb/silverlining>`_ and add code in
``silversupport/services/``.  It's not very complicated, or at least
not more complicated than using a database properly anyway.