dough flow

DoughFlow, n

1. the state of flow while baking;

2. a cheesy cash-flow pun;

3. a cash flow web app.

Architecture

DoughFlow is a client/server web application, built on EmberJS/Google Cloud Firebase respectively.

Back-end logic is implemented via Firebase Cloud Functions, using Firebase itself as a backing store for user data. This encapsulates business logic away from clients in a light-weight, server-less deployment.

The front-end is served as a static page from App Engine (TODO don't do this.... serve from GCS or something).

Infrastructure

Hosted on Google App Engine, using its microservice framework:

• Front-end implemented as service: default

The EmberJS files are served as static files (html & assets).

• Back-end functions are implemented as Cloud Functions (NB: Firebase flavor, not "pure" Cloud; integration seems too alpha)

• Back-end storage is straight-up Firebase

Development

For convenience, let DOUGH_FLOW=/home/me/my_dough_flow_checkout (e.g., add to shell rc, you need export in zsh)

Requirements

• GAE project with GAE app (probably need billing set up)

• Google Cloud SDK

• https://cloud.google.com/sdk/downloads

• NodeJS (I used 7.10 with nvm)

• brew install nvm; nvm install v7.10

• EmberJS (I used most recent as of 2017-05-26)

• npm install -g [email protected]

• Firebase

• npm install -g firebase-tools; npm install -g firebase-server

• Firebase project associated with your Google Cloud project

• Firebase Server & SDK

Building client (EmberJS)

Go to src/frontend.

ember build

(nb: is that it? does that auto install npm stuff?)

Go to gae/. Copy the build artifact for GAE deployment.

ln -s ../src/frontend/dist

See the front-end readme for more information.

Building for production

When building/deploying to actual AppEngine:

ember build --environment=production

Building Firebase components

TODO

Set up localhost route

Edit /etc/hosts (or similar) to map:

127.0.0.1      localhost.firebaseio.test

Firebase likes DB URLs being in a specific format, so you can't just use local ip or local host as the databaseURL.

Running

Local Firebase server

From the project root,

bin/start-doughflow-firebase# or for verbose debug: DEBUG=* bin/start-doughflow-firebase

(Note, you need to have DOUGH_FLOW in your environment for this script to work.)

(NB: you can add $DOUGH_FLOW/bin to your shell's path for convenience)

This will start a local Firebase-like server loaded with data from test/firebase.json, available on localhost.firebaseio.test port 5555. The Ember app is set up to use this hostname when environment=development.

Web client

Start the local Firebase server (see above). Then, from src/frontend,

ember server

This will start a live-reloading web server listening on port 4200. Go to http://localhost:4200 to see the app.

Cloud functions emulator

Not sure if we actually need this. We'll need cloud functions for delicate/sensitive server logic that clients shouldn't control. For now we don't have anything like that. But it was a pain to figure out. So here are some notes for posterity.

• Set up some functions in src/firebase/functions, use samples, like helloWorld, should be src/firebase/functions/index.js.

• Set up auth in src/firebase/functions/config.json file, for local you probably don't need actual credentials.

• Run the local function emulator:

From the src/firebase/functions directory:

export CLOUD_RUNTIME_CONFIG=`pwd`/config.json && firebase serve --only functions

Deploying to production

TODO