Install Chill for production with or without adding personal features

Chill is a set of “bundles” for a symfony app.

To run Chill in production or add new features to it (without merging those features to the chill core), you must create a symfony app, and eventually add those features into your app.

Once you are happy with the configuration, you should follow the dedicated instructions of how to go into production for Symfony apps.

Install a new app

Initialize project and dependencies

symfony new --version=5.4 my_chill_project
cd my_chill_project

We strongly encourage you to initialize a git repository at this step, to track further changes.

# add the flex endpoints required for custom recipes
cat <<< "$(jq '.extra.symfony += {"endpoint": ["flex://defaults", "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/57371968/repository/files/index.json/raw?ref=main"]}' composer.json)" > composer.json
# install chill and some dependencies
# TODO fix the suffix "alpha1" and replace by ^3.0.0 when version 3.0.0 will be released
symfony composer require chill-project/chill-bundles v3.0.0-RC3 champs-libres/wopi-lib dev-master@dev champs-libres/wopi-bundle dev-master@dev

We encourage you to accept the inclusion of the “Docker configuration from recipes”: this is the documented way to run the database. You must also accept to configure recipes from the contrib repository, unless you want to configure the bundles manually).

# fix some configuration
./post-install-chill.sh
# install node dependencies
yarn install
# and compile assets
yarn run encore production

Note

If you encounter this error during assets compilation (yarn run encore production) (repeated multiple times):

[tsl] ERROR in /tmp/chill/v1/public/bundles/chillcalendar/types.ts(2,65)
      TS2307: Cannot find module '../../../ChillMainBundle/Resources/public/types' or its corresponding type declarations.

run:

rm -rf public/bundles/*

Then restart the compilation of assets (:code:`yarn run encore production`)

Configure your project

You should read the configuration files in chill/config/packages carefully, especially if you have custom developments. But most of the time, this should be fine.

You have to configure some local variables, which are described in the .env file. The secrets should not be stored in this .env file, but instead using the secrets management tool or in the .env.local file, which should not be committed to the git repository.

You do not need to set variables for the smtp server, redis server and relatorio server, as they are generated automatically by the symfony server, from the docker compose services.

The only required variable is the ADMIN_PASSWORD. You can generate a hashed and salted admin password using the command symfony console security:hash-password <your password> 'Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\User'. Then, you can either:

  • add this password to the .env.local file, you must escape the character $: if the generated password is $2y$13$iyvJLuT4YEa6iWXyQV4/N.hNHpNG8kXlYDkkt5MkYy4FXcSwYAwmm, your .env.local file will be:

    ADMIN_PASSWORD=\$2y\$13\$iyvJLuT4YEa6iWXyQV4/N.hNHpNG8kXlYDkkt5MkYy4FXcSwYAwmm
# note: if you copy-paste the line above, the password will be "admin".

  • add the generated password to the secrets manager (note: you must add the generated hashed password to the secrets env, not the password in clear text).

  • set up the jwt authentication bundle

Some environment variables are available for the JWT authentication bundle in the .env file.

Prepare migrations and other tools

To continue the installation process, you will have to run migrations:

# start databases and other services
docker compose up -d
# the first start, it may last some seconds, you can check with docker compose ps
# run migrations
symfony console doctrine:migrations:migrate
# setup messenger
symfony console messenger:setup-transports
# prepare some views
symfony console chill:db:sync-views
# generate jwt token, required for some api features (webdav access, ...)
symfony console lexik:jwt:generate-keypair

Warning

If you encounter an error while running symfony console messenger:setup-transports, you can set up the messenger transport to redis, by adding this in the .env.local or .env file:

MESSENGER_TRANSPORT_DSN=redis://${REDIS_HOST}:${REDIS_PORT}/messages

Start your web server locally

At this step, Chill will be ready to be served locally, but without any configuration. You can run the project locally using the local symfony server:

# see the whole possibilities at https://symfony.com/doc/current/setup/symfony_server.html
symfony server:start -d

If you need to test the instance with accounts and some basic configuration, please install the fixtures (see below).

Add capabilities for dev

If you need to add custom bundles, you can develop them in the src/ directory, like for any other symfony project. You can rely on the whole chill framework, meaning there is no need to add them to the original chill-bundles.

You will require some bundles to have the following development tools:

  • add fixtures
  • add profiler and debug bundle

Install fixtures

# generate fixtures for chill
symfony composer require --dev doctrine/doctrine-fixtures-bundle nelmio/alice
# now, you can generate fixtures (this will reset your database)
symfony console doctrine:fixtures:load

This will generate user accounts, centers, and some basic configuration.

The accounts created are: center a_social, center b_social, center a_direction, … The full list is visible in the “users” table: docker compose exec database psql -U app -c "SELECT username FROM users".

The password is always password.

Warning

The fixtures are not fully functional. See the corresponding issue.

Add web profiler and debugger

symfony composer require --dev symfony/web-profiler-bundle symfony/debug-bundle

Working on chill bundles

If you plan to improve the chill-bundles repository, that’s great!

It would be better to follow the instruction about development. But if those features are deeply linked to some dev you made in the app, it can be easier to develop within the vendor/ directory.

You will have to download chill-bundles as a git repository (and not as an archive, which is barely editable).

In your composer.json file, add these lines:

 {
     "config": {
+        "preferred-install": {
+            "chill-project/chill-bundles": "source",
             "*": "dist"
+         }
     }

Then, run symfony composer reinstall chill-project/chill-bundles to re-install the package from source.

Update

In order to update your app, you must update dependencies:

  • for chill-bundles, you can set the last version manually in the composer.json file, or set the version to ^3.0.0 and run symfony composer update regularly
  • run composer update and yarn update to maintain your dependencies up-to-date.

After each update, you must update your database schema:

symfony console doctrine:migrations:migrate
symfony console chill:db:sync-views

Commit and share your project

If multiple developers work on a project, you can commit your symfony project and share it with other people.

When another developer clones your project, they will have to:

  • run symfony composer install and yarn install to install the same dependencies as the initial developer;
  • run yarn run encore production to compile assets;
  • copy any possible variables from the .env.local files;
  • start the docker compose stack, using docker compose, and run migrations, set up transports, and prepare chill db views (see the corresponding command above)

Operations

Build assets

run those commands:

# for production (or in dev, when you don't need to work on your assets and need some speed)
yarn run encore production
# in dev, when you wan't to reload the assets on each changes
yarn run encore dev --watch

How to execute the console ?

# start the console with all required variables
symfony console
# you can add your command after that:
symfony console list

How to generate documents

Documents are generated asynchronously by “consuming messages”.

You must generate them using a dedicated process:

symfony console messenger:consume async priority

To avoid memory issues, we encourage you to also use the --limit parameter of the command.

How to read emails sent by the program ?

In development, there is a built-in “mail catcher”. Open it with symfony open:local:webmail

How to run cron-jobs ?

Some commands must be executed in cron jobs. To execute them:

symfony console chill:cron-job:execute

What about materialized views ?

There are some materialized views in chill, to speed up some complex computations in the database.

In order to refresh them, run a cron job or refresh them manually in your database.

Troubleshooting

Error An exception has been thrown during the rendering of a template (“Asset manifest file “/var/www/app/web/build/manifest.json” does not exist.”). on first run

Build assets, see above.

Go to production

Currently, to run this software in production, the state of the art is the following :

  1. Run the software locally and tweak the configuration to your needs ;
  2. Build the image and store it in a private container registry.

Warning

In production, you must set these variables:

  • APP_ENV to prod
  • APP_DEBUG to false

There are security issues if you keep the same variables as for production.