Thoughts on Application State

Mat Warger AWS, JavaScript, React Leave a Comment

Use Redux! Use MobX! Just use `setState`!
Redux is functional! Mobx is reactive! `setState` is built-in!
But Redux has so much boilerplate! But MobX is more difficult to debug! But `setState` doesn’t scale!
Why don’t you just use Rematch to abstract the Redux boilerplate? Do I use redux-thunk? redux-saga? redux-observable?
How about using Unstated? How about just using the Context API?

:head-explodes:

There are a lot of options for developers regarding how and when to use state management libraries (SML).

Remember those last two articles (The Joy of Forms with React and Formik & One Router to Rule Them All: React Router) about the massively underplayed game library? There was a third part to come — a follow-up meant to implement an example of state management for an application. The application was small, granted, but this somewhat contrived example would tie it all up. It’d be the cherry on top. It would complete the rule of threes. 😉

There is not going to be another tutorial about which state library we can use to better manage our game library. Rather, in this post, we’re going to look at how and why you might use a library to manage your application’s state, and why that particular application is a perfect example of when you might not need a SML at all.

OpenShift Quick Start

David Pitt AWS, Cloud, DevOps, Docker, Microservices, OpenShift, openshiftseries Leave a Comment

Our previous blog in the series introduced RedHat’s OpenShift solution that provides a way for enterprise teams to implement their own PaaS. Essentially, it sits atop the Docker-based Kubernetes platform to provide a ready-to-use DevOps platform.

This blog introduces two hands-on exercises (taken from our OpenShift Course), that work to walk you through the following tasks:

– Installing OpenShift locally
– Adding a Container with an API service to a Pod

Unfortunately, it will take more than this quick start blog to get OpenShift installed and enabled in an enterprise. That said, developers, system admins, and any party that may be working on or responsible for the platform, will benefit from understanding how to get OpenShift up and running on a local machine as shown in this blog.

Managing Docker Containers with OpenShift and Kubernetes

Casey Justus AWS, Cloud, Development Technologies, DevOps, Docker, Microservices, openshiftseries Leave a Comment

For the last few years, Docker containers have been all the rage in the DevOps world. After all, what’s not to like? They allow you to strip out 99% of stuff in your VM and just deploy your code.

Containers can save resources, speed deployment, scale well and offer more fault tolerance. But how do you manage them?

In my experience, the Docker Machine and Docker Swarm stack hasn’t lived up my to expectations. It has a limited API, no support for monitoring and logging, and much more manual scaling. AWS’s EC2 containers scale well, but you’ll be locked into Amazon.

In my opinion, the best current stack for Docker containers includes Kubernetes and OpenShift. In this blog I will give a brief introduction to Kubernetes + OpenShift with an eye for what they do well…

Using Docker + AWS to Build, Deploy and Scale your App

Brandon Klimek AWS, Cloud, DevOps, Docker, Spring, Spring Boot, Tutorial 8 Comments

I recently worked to develop a software platform that relied on Spring Boot and Docker to prop up an API. Being the only developer on the project, I needed to find a way to quickly and efficiently deploy new releases. However, I found many solutions overwhelming to set up.

That was until I discovered AWS has tools that allow any developer to quickly build and deploy their application.

In this 30 minute tutorial, you will discover how to utilize the following technologies:
– AWS CodeCommit – source control (git)
– AWS Code Build – source code compiler, rest runner
– AWS Codepipeline – builds, tests, and deploys code every time the repo changes
-AWS Elastic Beanstalk – service to manage EC2 instances handling deployments, provisioning, load balancing, and health monitoring
-Docker + Spring Boot – Our containerized Spring Boot application for the demo

Once finished, you will have a Docker application running that automatically builds your software on commit, and deploys it to the Elastic beanstalk sitting behind a load balancer for scalability. This continuous integration pipeline will allow you to worry less about your deployments and get back to focusing on feature development within your application.