Deploying Scala Play Framework Applications on AWS Beanstalk using Docker containers

Scala-Play-App-Docker-Deploy.md

Deploying Scala Play Framework Applications on AWS Beanstalk using Docker containers

By Mohammad Al Amin - Intern at IncludeSec

Overview

1. Pre-requisites
2. Run your app in a local container
3. Stage your app
4. Setup AWS EB CLI
5. Deploy

Pre-requisites

• Have Activator installed

Extract zip and add the bin folder to your path

• Have AWS Elastic Beanstalk CLI installed

pip install awsebcli

• Have Docker installed

• Your Play application

Test your app to make sure it is ready for deployment. Run it locally using activator run which should make it available on http://localhost:9000

Note: Do not use activator run in deployment containers, it is not meant for deployment and will not work.

Run your app in a local container

Enter activator docker:publishLocal to automatically configure a local container image. Then run your container using docker run -p <host_port>:9000 <image_name> where host port is the TCP port you want to map the server to run on from the container port which should be 9000 by default. If you don't know the name of your image, run docker images.

Please note that this command will make the app listen on network all interfaces (aka 0.0.0.0) Please ensure you're firewalled off from any non-trusted networks before you run it.

Visit http://localhost:<host_port_from_earlier> and make sure the app is working properly.

Stage your app

Run activator docker:stage to package your app and all the necessary resources as well as generate a Dockerfile that can be used to build the Docker container. These resources are stored in target/docker/stage. Copy that entire folder to a location outside of the source tree (i.e. a location where the folder would not be a child of the root folder of the app source) such as ~ or /tmp.

Setup AWS EB CLI

1. Run eb init and select which region you would like to deploy to.
2. Provide your AWS access keys (if you dont have any, go get them).
3. Create a new application and select "Docker" as your platform (pick the latest version if asked).
4. (Optional) If you want to set up ssh for EC2 Instances, go ahead and do that now.

Deploy

Make sure your current directory is the stage folder that was copied earlier and edit the "Dockerfile" to include the following line:

EXPOSE 9000

Elastic Beanstalk will scan the "Dockerfile" for that line in order to know which port to map to port 80 of the public server.

Finally, run the command eb create and name your environment. eb create can be configured with all kinds of options such as disabling load balancing, different EC2 Instance tiers, and more. Check out the AWS EB CLI documentation for more information.

The deployed app should be up and running at the CNAME URL output by the eb create command within about 10 minutes.