Deploy Ruby on Rails application with Docker Compose and Capistrano with ease

ruby_on_rails_deployment.md

Docker

Files and Folders.

|
|\_ app
|...
|\_ docker
| |
| |\_ development
| |\_ staging
|  \_ production
|   |
|   |\_ .env
|   |\_ app-env.onf
|   |\_ app.nginx.conf
|   |\_ Dockerfile
|   |\_ postgres-env.conf
|    \_ rails-env.conf
|
|\_ docker-compose.yml
|\_ docker-compose.staging.yml
 \_ docker-compose.production.yml

Your docker/development folder contain Dockerfile for your development. Staging and Production have the same file, but their content will be different. For example, .env file which contain your secret.

.env

This file will be use as an application environment while deploying.

This file should be listed in your gitignore

RAILS_ENV=production
SECRET_KEY_BASE=your_secret_key

Please note that, your SECRET_KEY_BASE should never ever appear in your repository, I add it here because I have it in my .gitignore file. This file will later be copied to your remote host.

app-env.conf

Application environment.

# /etc/nginx/conf.d/00_app_env.conf
# File will be overwritten if user runs the container with `-e PASSENGER_APP_ENV=...`!
passenger_app_env production;

app.nginx.conf

An Nginx configuration for your server. Please note that your ruby version at the last line must match your Docker file base image ruby version.

# /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/app.nginx.conf:
server {
    listen 80;
    root /home/app/your_app_name/public;

    passenger_enabled on;
    passenger_user app;

    passenger_ruby /usr/bin/ruby2.3;
}

Dockerfile

Base image for your application.

FROM phusion/passenger-ruby23:latest
MAINTAINER Wiwatta  Mongkhonchit "zentetsukenz@gmail.com"

# Set correct environment variables.
ENV HOME /root

# Use baseimage-docker's init process.
CMD ["/sbin/my_init"]

# Expose Nginx HTTP service
EXPOSE 80

# Start Nginx / Passenger
RUN rm -f /etc/service/nginx/down

# Remove the default site
RUN rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

# Nginx App setup
ADD docker/staging/app.nginx.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/app.nginx.conf
ADD docker/staging/postgres-env.conf /etc/nginx/main.d/postgres-env.conf
ADD docker/staging/rails-env.conf /etc/nginx/main.d/rails-env.conf
ADD docker/staging/app-env.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/00_app_env.conf

# Update for security reason
RUN apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confold"

# Gem caching
WORKDIR /tmp
ADD Gemfile /tmp/
ADD Gemfile.lock /tmp/
RUN bundle install --jobs 20 --retry 5

# App setup
#
# This is your application setup steps, you should also do what you need to do here to make your 
# application working for production environment.
#
WORKDIR /home/app/your_app_name
ADD . /home/app/your_app_name
RUN rm -f config/database.yml
RUN mv config/database.yml.sample config/database.yml
RUN chown -R app:app /home/app/your_app_name
RUN rake assets:precompile RAILS_ENV=production

# Clean up APT when done.
RUN apt-get clean && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* /tmp/* /var/tmp/*

Please note that, I swap database.yml with database.yml.sample because in my database.yml.sample contain postgres container port resolving which in my development, it's not necessary.

database.yml.sample

default: &default
  adapter: postgresql
  encoding: unicode
  pool: 5
  timeout: 5000
  username: postgres
  host: postgres
  port: <%= ENV['POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_PORT'] %>

development:
  <<: *default
  database: app_development

test:
  <<: *default
  database: app_test

production:
  <<: *default
  database: app_production

postgres-env.conf

Just a postgres environment variable, so that your app can pickup your database.

# /etc/nginx/main.d/postgres-env.conf:
env POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_ADDR;
env POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_PORT;

rails-env.conf

To set environment variable for your application while running. This related to your .env file.

# /etc/nginx/main.d/rails-env.conf:
env RAILS_ENV;
env SECRET_KEY_BASE;

docker-compose.yml

There are 3 docker-compose files. The normal one, docker-compose.yml is for you development. As for your staging and production, I separated it into 2 file because I would like let Capistrano be able to pickup staging and production compose file which inside contain some different things.

docker-compose.staging.yml

version: "2"
services:
  web:
    restart: always
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: docker/staging/Dockerfile
    env_file: docker/staging/.env
    
    # Map your desire staging port here, if you plan to run this in the same host without using 
    # subdomain.
    ports:
      - "9876:80"
    depends_on:
      - postgres

  postgres:
    image: postgres:9.5
    ports:
      - "5432"
    volumes_from:
      - data

  data:
    image: postgres:9.5

docker-compose.production.yml

version: "2"
services:
  web:
    restart: always
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: docker/production/Dockerfile
    env_file: docker/production/.env
    ports:
      - "80:80"
    depends_on:
      - postgres

  postgres:
    image: postgres:9.5
    ports:
      - "5432"
    volumes_from:
      - data

  data:
    image: postgres:9.5

Capistrano

If you are not familiar with Capistrano please visit their site, then do install it into your project.

After setup Capistrano, here is a steps to take to be able to deploy your app with just one command.

cap production deploy

First, make sure that you setup your remote host for Capistrano to be able to do things, e.g. if you're using DigitalOcean, you should follow Initial Server Setup and create some user you use for deployment. I will call this guy "deploy" for the sake of simplicity.

After "deploy" is able to connect to your server, then let's make some task for it to be able to run with Docker Compose smoothly.

File

These following files reside in lib/capistrano/tasks folder.

setup.rake

namespace :setup do
  desc "Upload .env file to shared folder"
  task :env do
    on roles(:app) do
      upload! fetch(:env_file_path), [shared_path, fetch(:env_file_path)].join('/')
    end
  end

  namespace :check do
    desc "Task description"
    task :linked_files => fetch(:env_file_path)
  end
end

env_file_path is set in config/deploy/production.rb with the path to .env file.

...

set :env_file_path, 'docker/production/.env'

...

access_check.rake

desc "Check that we can access everything"
task :check_write_permissions do
  on roles(:app) do |host|
    if test("[ -w #{fetch(:deploy_to)} ]")
      info "#{fetch(:deploy_to)} is writable on #{host}"
    else
      error "#{fetch(:deploy_to)} is not writable on #{host}"
    end
  end
end

composing.rake

namespace :composing do
  desc "Build application images"
  task :build do
    on roles(:app) do
      within current_path do
        execute("docker-compose",
          "--project-name=#{fetch(:application)}_#{fetch(:stage)}",
          "-f", "docker-compose.#{fetch(:stage)}.yml",
          "build"
        )
      end
    end
  end

  desc "Take down compose application containers"
  task :down do
    on roles(:app) do
      within current_path do
        execute("docker-compose",
          "--project-name=#{fetch(:application)}_#{fetch(:stage)}",
          "-f", "docker-compose.#{fetch(:stage)}.yml",
          "down"
        )
      end
    end
  end

  namespace :restart do
    desc "Rebuild and restart web container"
    task :web do
      on roles(:app) do
        within current_path do
          execute("docker-compose",
            "--project-name=#{fetch(:application)}_#{fetch(:stage)}",
            "-f", "docker-compose.#{fetch(:stage)}.yml",
            "build", "web"
          )
          execute("docker-compose",
            "--project-name=#{fetch(:application)}_#{fetch(:stage)}",
            "-f", "docker-compose.#{fetch(:stage)}.yml",
            "up", "-d", "--no-deps", "web"
          )
        end
      end
    end
  end

  namespace :database do
    desc "Up database and make sure it's ready"
    task :up do
      on roles(:app) do
        within current_path do
          execute("docker-compose",
            "--project-name=#{fetch(:application)}_#{fetch(:stage)}",
            "-f", "docker-compose.#{fetch(:stage)}.yml",
            "up", "-d", "--no-deps", "postgres"
          )
        end
      end
      sleep 5
    end

    desc "Create database"
    task :create do
      on roles(:app) do
        within current_path do
          execute("docker-compose",
            "--project-name=#{fetch(:application)}_#{fetch(:stage)}",
            "-f", "docker-compose.#{fetch(:stage)}.yml",
            "run", "--rm", "web", "rake", "db:create"
          )
        end
      end
    end

    desc "Migrate database"
    task :migrate do
      on roles(:app) do
        within current_path do
          execute("docker-compose",
            "--project-name=#{fetch(:application)}_#{fetch(:stage)}",
            "-f", "docker-compose.#{fetch(:stage)}.yml",
            "run", "--rm", "web", "rake", "db:migrate"
          )
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

Deploy configuration

In your config/deploy.rb, you should have something like this.

config/deploy.rb

...
...

namespace :deploy do
  desc "Initialize application"
  task :initialize do
    invoke 'composing:build'
    invoke 'composing:database:up'
    invoke 'composing:database:create'
    invoke 'composing:database:migrate'
  end

  after :published, :restart do
    invoke 'composing:restart:web'
    invoke 'composing:database:migrate'
  end

  before :finished, :clear_containers do
    on roles(:app) do
      execute "docker ps -a -q -f status=exited | xargs -r docker rm -v"
      execute "docker images -f dangling=true -q | xargs -r docker rmi -f"
    end
  end
end

The first time you deploy your application, your must run this command

cap production deploy:initialize

To make your database ready for your application. Then, the next time you deploy your application, just run command

cap production deploy

Done.

Things that can be improved.

• Dockerfile, would be awesome if I can build my own image from scratch, which should be very small.
• Scaling. Found a very nice guide but haven't tried it once.

Acknowledgement.

Thanks to a wonderful guys in Docker, Capistrano and Passenger Docker that they made these tools available for developer to automate things pretty easy. Also many thanks to some guides that I do not remember what it is. Without those guides, I won't be able to make these things complete and easy with just one command.

References.

• Phusion Passenger Docker
• Capistrano
• Initial Server Setup(DGO)
• Using Compose in production

anyone could give me for all required files & it's content?