dyl-wf / studyshuffle

studyshuffle

Description

The following project is a maven spring-boot rest api with an embedded thymeleaf client. This project makes use of a mariadb database (v10.0.5) and runs in an embedded tomcat environment. In order to run this project locally the following requirements need to be met.

Requirements

Linux environment Java 17.0.9 Maven 3.8.7 Mariadb 10.0.5 Springboot

Compilation and Local Deployment

This project follows the maven lifecycle policy up until the package step, deployment is handled with a more manual approach and can only be accomplished by someone with the correct access rights.

In order to compile, test and package the project run mvn package In order to start the project locally run mvn spring-boot:run

You will need to define logging directories for the project at /var/log/studyshuffle and create a application.properties file at /etc/studyshuffle

Here is an example application.properties file:

spring.application.name=studyshuffle
spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mariadb://localhost:3306/studyshuffle?useSSL=false
spring.datasource.username=studyshuffle
spring.datasource.password=<db-password>
spring.jpa.properties.javax.persistence.sharedCache.mode=NONE
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=update
spring.jpa.properties.hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.MariaDBDialect

# App Properties
studyshuffle.app.jwtCookieName=studyshuffle
studyshuffle.app.jwtSecret=<64-character-token>
studyshuffle.app.jwtExpirationMs=30000

note you'll need a local instance of mariadb running with the database created and privileges granted (with a password) to the study shuffle user. This can be achieved by running the following query in mariadb GRANT ALL ON studyshuffle.* TO 'studyshuffle'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '<db-password>';

Once you've run the application for the first time you will need to run the db init script to create the user roles.

Deployment to cloud

The production version of this application is running on a centos VM in a cloud environment in a software defined network. Both the spring app and db are running on this machine. The machine's name is sandbox-dylan-db03. Ideally the spring app and database would be running on two separate machines but due to resource and time constraints i decided to setup both services on the same machine, this is a security risk.

sandbox-dylan-db03 is only accessible via a VPN. Only authorized users can connect to this machine via ssh through a vpn. The website is exposed to the public through the use of public proxy, please see the gateway diagram for more context. This proxy's name is sandbox-gateway-0x. sandbox-gateway-0x is running haproxy, which proxies tcp requests to the desired endpoints. For my project I have a public domain which points to sandbox-gateway-0x, any tcp request from this domain is proxied through to sandbox-dylan-db. apache is running on sandbox-dylan-db. apache serves the ssl certificate and proxies request through to a instance of the spring app running locally on non-specific port.

sandbox-dylan-db03 is responsible for building and deploying the project. There is a cron job that periodically checks for changes on the remote git repository on github. If it detects a change, it will trigger a mvn package, copy that project to the deployment directory and start it by using systemd. A systemd service is defined to manage to the starting and stopping of the java application. The production environment (application.properties) only exists on sandbox-dylan-db03. This environment is loaded in when the java app starts.