Google App Engine host routing - php

I'm trying to deploy an Google App engine app with this setup:
www.domain.com -> Wordpress Frontend
app.domain.com -> AngularJS Backend
api.domain.com -> Rest API used by Angular Backend
Can I achieve this using the basic app schema? Or should I use the modules API?
My main worry about using modules is that they use different instances, increasing the billing. Am I correct?

Modules API is your best bet in this case. You can set automatic scaling to all modules so that new instances are only spun up when there's requests.

It's completely up to you...
Depending on how you structure your project you could do it in either way but of course with Modules things would be a lot nicer organized, although yes, it would increase your monthly bill, while with a single default module your bill would likely to be smaller but your code organization - messier.
If "api.domain.com -> Rest API used by Angular Backend" uses any backend language other than PHP (Wordpress) then you would have to run them as two separate modules/projects since you cannot have both PHP and Python/Java/Go runtimes on the same instance.
If your "app.domain.com -> AngularJS Backend" part consists of static files only and no backend code (php/python/go/java) then that wouldn't require running instances as everything would be served from Google's frontend servers and not directly from your instances (the static files are normally not even included with the code you deploy unless you specify that you want that in app.yaml).

Related

SAAS - Custom domain for the same application

I have a SAAS in production and I want to give the customer the option of having a custom domain.
The application is in PHP without any javascript framework.
I would like to know the best ways to set up so that it is practical in terms of scale and implementation.
The operation should be as follows:
MAIN APPLICATION
myapp.com/company/product/clothes
The client will be able to navigate through the page through his domain as well, but everything being consumed from the main application without code duplication.
Customer domain example
companyapp.com/product/clothes
I currently use a shared hosting that contains WHM/CPANEL.

How to handle infrastructure for the website in PHP which will be used many times?

I have a few PHP Laravel projects (restful API, admin app, client app). There is only one database which is used by API. The project is some kind of app which can be used by some companies. They have access to admin panel, client web page, they can use own API, they can make own users, permissions and so on. There is no problem if this project will be used by one client, but I'm going to sell this app to many people. I will be responsible for updates, hosting, configurations etc. I wonder how to make it the best way and I have a few ideas.
I thought about cloning the app on the server each time someone buys it from me. This requires setting up a new subdomain on the server and a lot of disk space. Not sure about it.
Or maybe cloning the app and sharing some files with symlinks like vendor, node_modules etc.
Another idea is to make it as a one project with many databases for different clients, but how to make it in Laravel in the best way? I will need some dynamic way to change the database connections (I want each client to have separate database), I'm not sure about conflicts with sessions, cache etc.
Maybe separate databases is a wrong idea, and it's better to have one database and make it as a one project and sell the access to project? But then I need to keep data of my client in one database.
What do you think?
Create this application as SaaS (software as a service). You can give them some default templates of front end or even client app (website and admin part), but keep all backend at your servers. Make REST endpoints, authenticate clients and give them functionality that they bought.
For example:
Client A bought calculator services from you. It authenticates, and makes GET call to /api/calculate/subtract/5/1. You give them response what your calculator does, for example 5-1 = 4. They can use your prepared templates for this data preview or create their own.
Client B bought calculator and storage services from you. You calculate same value, give it back, but also store it in your own database. So client B also can make call GET /api/storage/last_calculation and you give them 4, because client data stored in your database, he bought storage service too so he do not need to setup database for himself.
It is very simple example, but you should get the point.
For example simple scheme with separate database for each client:

Google Cloud Platform files location

I wanted to move a website from a shared server to Google Cloud but I cannot wrap my head around it. Before giving up completely, I decided to make this question:
I already completed the Hello World tutorial (https://cloud.google.com/php/getting-started/hello-world). But what if I want to update the index.html file? Where would I find it?
I was expecting to see it in one of the storage Buckets, but that's not the case... even when installing a Kubernetes Engine.
If you decide to use Google App Engine Flexible (as the hello world sample app that you linked to) you need to understand the idea of this additional layer of abstraction over your server(s). App Engine Flexible is designed to make things easier for you - you focus on your code in your local machine where you modify it, update it and then with one command (gcloud app deploy) you instruct the App Engine to do one of the following:
start a VM (your server) and a Docker container with your app in it
if it's not already running
in case you are updating an existing app, it will update the code in the VM which is your server. If your app receives a lot of traffic, you may have more than one container and VM running and all of them will get updated.
Both things are presented schematically in the image in this section.
This way you can develop your app locally and not worry about actually getting inside the server with for e.g. ssh. Your code is there in those VM(s) and App Engine manages it for you (however, if you really need to, it is still possible to ssh into the VM in App Engine Flex environment).
If you have a static website, it can be hosted in the Storage buckets, which is a different scenario. However, as you're using PHP I assume it's more likely that your website is dynamic.

Combining Angularjs and CodeIgniter

I am working on an existing site written in CodeIgniter and we are looking at using AngularJS for some pages that require a lot of frontend functionality but we don't want to replace all all CodeIgniter views (at once (yet)).
So i click a link that's controlled by angular's router and it is handled by javascript but next link could be a "normal" request that should handled by the CodeIgniter framework.
Is there some elegant way to combine these two methods? I don't really mind some extra client side overhead because the site is not running in production yet.
It sounds like you're looking to gradually make less use of CodeIgniter's (CI) routing as your angular application grows. This is not difficult but requires a lot of detail. Which method will work depends on your project structure. Note: I removed index.php from Code Igniter URLs, so the paths below may be different than default.
1) CodeIgniter installed in root
If CI is installed on the root of your server, you can create a folder within CI (for instance I have an "ng" folder). Your project will look like:
/controllers
/models
/ng
(etc)
/index.php (code igniter index file)
place an .htaccess file within /ng with the following:
Order allow, deny
Allow from all
This allows the files within /ng to be directly accessed, rather than sending those requests back through CI's routing system. For example you can load this directly now:
example.com/ng/partials/angular-view.html
The main web page will still be created by CodeIgniter, but it can now include Angular assets, such as partial views, etc. Eventually you can replace most of what CodeIgniter is doing by just returning a simple page, and having Angular load partial views from /ng like it's designed for.
This method is nice because CodeIgniter can control whether that initial page is loaded at all (via some user authentication code in your CI controller). If user isn't logged in, they are redirected and never see the Angular app.
2) CodeIgniter in Directory
If CI is installed in a directory, such as example.com/myapp/(code igniter) you can simply create a directory next to it, example.com/myappNg/
/myapp/
/myapp/controllers/
/myapp/models/
/myapp/(etc)
/myapp/index.php (code igniter index file)
/myappNg/
/myappNg/partials/
/myappNg/js/
/myappNg/(etc)
Now in your Angular application, you can request resources from CI by making paths relative to the domain root, rather than relative to the Angular app. For instance, in Angular, you will no longer request a partial view from the Angular folder partials/angular-view.html, rather you'll want to request views from CI /myapp/someResource. Note the leading /. "someResource" can return an html document, or JSON or whatever you're doing with Code Igniter in the first place.
Eventually you can replace the number of paths which reference /myapp/. Once you no longer use CI for anything, you can simply place your Angular index.html in /myapp/ and it will continue to reference your paths at /myappNg/.
TL;DR Make your Angular app fully available and decouple it from CodeIgniter. Gradually move toward using Angular partial views and other JSON sources instead of linking to CodeIgniter pages. Eventually replace your CodeIgniter endpoint with an HTML file which bootstraps Angular.
Your best bet is to keep your backend code separate from the angular code
and use the codeInginter code as an API
/Codeigniter Code
/Angular Code
Because CodeIgniter comes with its share of security feature this should be your best bet
I've never used Angular - nevertheless this may help.
So i click a link that's controlled by angular's router and it is
handled by javascript
Does this JavaScript make an Ajax request to one of your CI's controllers? If so, CI now has the is_ajax_request() method, which allows you to check if a request (POST or GET) is coming via ajax. You can proceed differently based on a request coming from Ajax vs a normal request.
User guide (bottom of the page): http://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-guide/libraries/input.html
Hope it helps!
I inherited a CI app and I'm using Angular with CI mainly for routing requests. In my case I am not using Angular templates, so I use a ' ' empty but with a space parameter for the template option in my $routeProvider config. This allows me to do the usual CI ajax requests without too much change to the original server-side code.
angular.module('my_app', []).
config(['$routeProvider', function($routeProvider) {
$routeProvider.
when('/', { template: " ", controller: my_routes.mainpage}).
when('/design/:designId/:action', {template: " ", controller: my_routes.show_design}).
when('/vote_design/:designId', {template: " ", controller: my_routes.vote_design}).
otherwise({redirectTo: '/'});
}]);
To addition to the answer given by Aaron Martin, one can also use it as a client - server approach.
Lets say we make 2 folders in root of our project :
Client
Server
Client folder will contain all the code of AngularJS and the client side libraries including the Bower and Npm libraries.
The routing of the client side will also be handled by AngularJS router.
There will be factories or services which will act as providers for angularjs on client side.
Those file will contain the code of sending request and receiving response from server side.
Server Folder will have the code of Laravel or CodeIgniter or Any other PHP framework.
You will create all the APIs of the requests and develop the functionality accordingly.
Hence the PHP section (Server Directory) at the whole will be storing all the Media Files and Database Files. Moreover it will also have any receiving links for RSS feeds and so on.
The Client shall just receive all the response in JSON or XML format when it requests on any API on its server..
This according to me is one of the finest practice for developing Webapps.
I picked up a CI site from another programmer I work with that is on leave for a few months. Our site is build mostly with a lot of angular due to the the nature of its purpose. Our solution was a little different.
All that varies from the standard CI framework is a couple folders: js\angular\controllers andjs\angular\modules in CI's application folder, to hold all of the angular model and controller files. Then load the angular docs into the application base folder.

Moodle module type

I am tasked with writing a relatively small and simple PHP web app which will use a small database. Authentication for this will be through randomly generated hex keys in the query string which are generated by an administration page and emailed to desired users.
This is all fine so far, but here's the catch:
For various political reasons, we are forced to make this app a Moodle module. I can use the Moodle database in MySQL, but I will be working with my own tables which do not interact with Moodle, and Moodle will not interact with my tables. I must also to use the Moodle database abstraction rather than direct PHP->MySQL access.
I do not want my users to know they are operating within Moodle. They shouldn't need to log in to Moodle to access my web app, and they probably won't have access to Moodle anyway. Those users who do have access to Moodle shouldn't see this web app in their list of Moodle functions.
I've thrown together a few small PHP pages, included some Moodle libs, and placed the code in the moodle/mods directory. Accessing the PHP pages on the server with the URLs directly result in a Moodle error, since I'm not accessing the module through proper channels. I get the "Incorrect access detected" error.
Is what I'm tasked to do even possible? If so, how is the best way to accomplish it? Do I need to write an authentication module and then an activity module? Is there any way to bypass all of Moodle's authentication and simply use the database abstraction without editing the core Moodle configuration files? (I know it's possible by modifying the Moodle code, but that is sadly not an option).
I have plenty of PHP experience, but I only have about 4 hours of Moodle experience and I'm getting nowhere fast.
It sounds to me that you might be trying to access the script while coming in from a host other than what poodle has specified in its config file. You could try dumping you http_host and noodles wwwroot to see if the line up. I'm less familiar with 2 than 1.9 but you might be able to define abort_after_config then include config then change the cfg wwwroot then define abort_after_config_cancel then include setup. Otherwise you could spoof the host otherwise you can delete the check in Tue lib/setup.pup file
Not sure quite what you are trying to achieve here but any of the following may work.
(1) If you have a stand-alone platform you want delivered within an LMS framework then you might offer a counter proposal of developing it in your preferred environment but wrapping it in LTI. Moodle can then deliver it via the External Tool plugin and you can get two-way communications between the two for authentication and tracking.
(2) Doing it in Moodle
Create an authentication with a login_hook and make sure this is is moved to the top of the authentication plugins list so that it is checked first before the others. Use the hook to process the hex key (as GET or POST parameter) or take you to an alternate process and return true (or create session). You could also use the 'alternative login page' in the authentication settings alongside this plugin hook. This should take of authentication.
If enrolment is not an issue then create your plugin as a local plugin (not mod) and use the above hook to redirect to this page after login. This gives you a bit more flexibility in the libraries you use and you can still use front-page enrolments if necessary as a workaround. If you really need enrolments, course roles, and gradebook then use a mod to leverage these. There is a single activity course format in the latest Moodle that gives you a format to run just your bespoke activity on its own.
Finally develop your own layout type in the theme for the local plugin if using that or for the course and incourse layouts if using courses so that you can control what of the standard Moodle navigation and structure you want.
If the plugin is sharing a Moodle already being used for other activities then you'll need to be sensitive to this. If you're just running your own thing then it will be much easier.
(3) Use Web Services to get what you want from Moodle in your own App.

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