Horde

horde is a local dev paas that uses docker, consul, and fabio to help make managing a development platform easy.

The main components of horde are service plugins and driver plugins:

• Service Plugins help to manage shared services like consul, mysql, and rabbitmq.
• Driver Plugins provide a way to express the conventions your application services follow and to run them in a consistent and unified way.

Table of Contents

• Install Horde
  • Dependencies
  • Install
    • Build Horde From Source
  • Configuration
    • Linux
    • OS X
• Your First Application
• Service Plugins
  • Core Services
  • Contrib Services
  • Custom Services
• Driver Plugins
  • horde.json file reference
  • Custom Drivers

Install Horde

Dependencies

• hostess manages horde application host names in your /etc/hosts file.
• docker manages your horde containers.
• jq to work with json output

Install

1. Install the horde cli tool

wget http://dl.fligl.io/artifacts/horde/horde_latest.gz
gunzip horde_latest.gz
chmod +x horde
mv horde /usr/local/bin

2. Set up your plugins path

mkdir -p ~/.horde/plugins/

3. Get the core plugins

wget http://dl.fligl.io/artifacts/horde/horde-plugins-core_latest.tar.gz
tar -C ~/.horde/plugins -xvf horde-plugins-core_latest.tar.gz

4. Get the contrib plugins

wget http://dl.fligl.io/artifacts/horde/horde-plugins-contrib_latest.tar.gz
tar -C ~/.horde/plugins -xvf horde-plugins-contrib_latest.tar.gz

Build Horde From Source

git clone https://github.com/benschw/horde.git
cd horde
make build install contrib-install

Continue reading to learn how to configure your environment.

Configuration

Linux

Specify your machine's docker0 bridge ip with an environment variable

export HORDE_IP='172.20.20.1'

Configure the docker daemon to use consul for DNS by specifying your machine's docker0 ip. Edit the file /etc/default/docker and update the value for DOCKER_OPTS:

DOCKER_OPTS="--dns 172.20.20.1"

By default, consul will recurse DNS requests to google (8.8.8.8) but you can specify a custom recursor dns server by setting the following env variable:

export HORDE_DNS=1.2.3.4

OS X

Specify your machine's vboxnet0 bridge ip with an environment variable

export HORDE_IP='172.20.20.1'

This interface is configurable with the VBoxManage command. horde can take care of syncing it to your HORDE_IP if you set the following environment variable:

export HORDE_ENSURE_VBOXNET=true

Configure the docker daemon to use consul for DNS by specifying your machine's vboxnet0 ip. Navigate to the docker settings UI, click on Daemon, and then click on Advanced. Specify your machine's ip (along with a backup like google's):

{
	"dns": [
		"172.20.20.1",
		"8.8.8.8"
	]
}

By default, consul will recurse DNS requests to google (8.8.8.8) but you can specify a custom recursor dns server by setting the following env variable:

export HORDE_DNS=1.2.3.4

Your First Application

Create a hello world application (or use the example)

git clone https://github.com/benschw/horde.git
cd horde/example

Run it

horde run

Test it out

curl http://foo.horde

What is running?

The base services are consul, registrator, and fabio. registrator watches as you start up new applications and registers them with consul. fabio watches consul and sets up routes to your applications.

Once you've run an application with horde, you can see its discovery details at http://consul.horde/ui and its routing details at http://fabio.horde/routes.

Service Plugins

Core Services

Fabio

fabio.horde

Consul

consul.horde/ui/

Contrib Services

Mysql

Use login: admin / changeme

Force the mysql container to publish port 3306 over a specific external port (e.g. 3307):

export HORDE_MYSQL_PUBLISH_PORT=3307

By default the MySQL data storage is temporary. The data will be lost every time you restart your computer or restart the docker container. Set this variable to permanently keep MySQL data:

export HORDE_MYSQL_PERSIST_DATA=true

Rabbitmq

rabbitmq.horde

Use login: guest / guest

Chinchilla

Splunk

splunk.horde

Custom Services

In addition to the provided core and contrib services, you can add custom services by creating a shell script (following the naming convention: NAME.service.sh) in your configured HORDE_PLUGIN_PATH (defaults to ~/.horde/plugins). Each service should implement a single function named like:

services::custom_name() {
	container::call run -d --name custom_name my/custom_image
}

Service plugins can be anywhere in the configured plugin path (so cloning the repo in which you manage your plugin(s) into this directory would work fine.)

Look at the provided services (~/.horde/plugins/core/) as a model for creating your. Notice the helper functions that help you build up a docker command that integrates well with the horde ecosystem.

Driver Plugins

A json config file named horde.json should be placed in each application service project's root directory. This will configure horde when run from the project's root.

At a bare minimum, this config file should define a driver and a name. The driver will specify how your application should be run, and the name will be used to register your service with consul and set up a named route to your application (http://name.horde).

In addition to these, there are other properties you can set in order to customize how your application runs.

horde.json File Reference

driver

Specify your driver in the horde.json config. Horde comes with a static_web driver included, but you can add your own with custom plugin drivers.

{
	...
	"driver": "static_web",
	...
}

name

This property is used as your application's container name in docker, its service name in consul, and by default is used to generate a host name for your app (http://name.horde).

{
	...
	"name": "foo",
	...
}

host

This field overrides the convention based host name generated using the name field.

{
	...
	"host": "foo.tld",
	...
}

env_file

path to a file containing environment variables you would like injected into your container.

{
	...
	"env_file": "./env-vars",
	...
}

image

If your driver doesn't have a default image, or if you would like to override it, specify a docker image string here.

{
	...
	"image": "ubuntu:14.04",
	...
}

services

An array of services your application depends on. Other than consul, registrator, and fabio (and whatever you might have set in HORDE_SERVICES), if your application needs any other services (such as mysql) here is the place to specify them.

These services will also be linked to your application service.

{
	...
	"services": [
		"mysql",
		"rabbitmq"
	],
	...
}

hosts

An array of host name aliases. These names will be configured in addition to either the default http://name.horde or http://host.

{
	...
	"hosts": [
		"foo.tld",
		"bar.tld"
	],
	...
}

Custom Drivers

In addition to the provided static_web driver, you can add custom drivers by creating a shell script (following the naming convention: NAME.driver.sh) in your configured HORDE_PLUGIN_PATH (defaults to ~/.horde/plugins). Each driver should implement a single function named like:

drivers::custom_name() {
	container::call run -d --name custom_name my/custom_image
}

Driver plugins can be anywhere in the configured plugin path (so cloning the repo in which you manage your plugin(s) into this directory would work fine.)

Look at the provided static_web driver (~/.horde/plugins/core/static_web.driver.sh) as a model for creating your own opinionated drivers. Notice the helper functions that help you build up a docker command that integrates well with the horde ecosystem.