Deploy the application to SAP Cloud Platform Cloud Foundry Environment

Estimated time

🕓 10 minutes

Objective

In this exercise you'll learn how you can push applications to the SAP Cloud Platform in your trial account for Cloud Foundry Environment. We will use the Cloud Foundry Command Line Interface. Open a command prompt and follow the steps below.

Exercise description

Target & Login

💡 Note (Windows instructions) Switch to the terminal on your computer. For that please: - press the Windows key and the 'R' key - type cmd into the input field and press the return key

1. You need to tell the CF CLI which Cloud Foundry you will use. To do this you have to set the API endpoint to the Cloud Controller of the Cloud Foundry region where you created your Cloud Foundry trial using cf api CLOUD_FOUNDRY_API_ENDPOINT.

• If you attend TechEd Las Vegas, target the US10 region API endpoint:

cf api https://api.cf.us10.hana.ondemand.com

• If you attend TechEd Barcelona, target the EU10 region API endpoint:

cf api https://api.cf.eu10.hana.ondemand.com

💡 Note: You can find the API endpoints for the different regions where Cloud Foundry Environment is available in the SAP Cloud Platform Documentation

2. Login with your user account. At the command prompt type:

   cf login
   

   You will be prompted to fill in the e-mail and password you used when you registered for the SAP Cloud Platform trial account:

   Email> enter your e-mail
   Password> password for your user
   

3. You have to select the Cloud Foundry organization and space that you will use. If you are assigned to only one Cloud Foundry organization and space, the system automatically targets you to the relevant Cloud Foundry organization and space once you login and you will see it in the previous step under OK.

💡 Note: In case you have created more than one Cloud Foundry organization and space in the region you pointed to due to previous usage of SAP Cloud Platform Cloud Foundry Environment, you cna select which one should be used by the cf target command or choose when prompted in the CF CLI:

cf target -o ORGANIZATION -s SPACE

You are now ready to start working in your Cloud Foundry space.

Application Manifest

When you push an application to the Cloud Foundry Environment you can either provide parameters in CF CLI to the push command or define an application deployment descriptor file (manifest.yml) and summarize there the push parameters instead of typing these every time you push. For more information regarding application manifest file you can check the Cloud Foundry documentation

• Now we will create an application manifest.yml file for our sample Product List application. Go to Eclipse again and in the Project Explorer in Eclipse on the sample Product List app -> right click -> New -> File. create file and name it manifest.yml.

• Now open the file and insert the following snippet adjusting it to your application:

  💡 Note path should point to the jar file produced in you project's target folder as an outcome of the Maven build, so maybe you will have to replace the name of the jar with your jar file name.

  💡 Note host should be unique as the host namespace is shared with all applications within Cloud Foundry, so add at the end your birth date - day, month and year.

 applications:
 # Application
 - name: product-list
   instances: 1
   memory: 896M
   host: product-list-YOUR-BIRTHDATE-DAY-MONTH-YEAR
   path: target/my-product-list-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar
   buildpack: https://github.com/cloudfoundry/java-buildpack.git

Save the file after editing.

Note: In case you make use of the Community Java Buildpack it is recommended to specify the version of the buildpack e.g. buildpack: https://github.com/cloudfoundry/java-buildpack.git#v4.19.1, you can get the current version using cf buildpacks and on Github there must be a so-called release for every released buildpack version.

Push

• At the command prompt, go to the root directory of your SpringBoot application where you just created the manifest.yml file. Type the following command:

cf push

This triggers the application deployment process using the application manifest.yml you just created. The fist step is uploading the application binaries to the cloud. In the next phase, the so called staging happens which results into a 💧 droplet. Then the release phase tells the Cloud Foundry how to start the application. Once the command finishes with success you can request the application in a browser - copy and paste the url printed in console.

💡Note: In case the command fails, read through the error message. It may be you didn't change the parameters in manifest.yml for your local sample properly. Or the quota in your trial account exceeded - if you already used your trial you have to clean-up applications and service instances prior continuing with the exercises. You can do so via cockpit:

• navigate to the list of Applications running in your Space and delete all or stop all running applications;
• go to the Service Instances and delete all.

Request the application

Now you have the application running in the SAP Cloud Platform Cloud Foundry Environment in your trial account. Open Chrome browser - navigate to SAP Cloud Platform cockpit:

• https://account.hana.ondemand.com/cockpit#/home/overview
• You should land in your user home. If you are not there, click on Home.
• Click on Go to Cloud Foundry Trial button
  
  
  
  
• You will land in your trial Global Account -> Click on the subaccount (usually the name is trial) -> Click on Spaces in the left hand navigation --> click on the name of your space (it's usually dev)
  
  
  
  
• You are now in your trial space where you can see the running applications - in our case it should be your Product List application that you just pushed to the cloud. You can click on the application name:
  
  
  
  A dedicated application view will open where you will see the Application Routes - click on the URL to see your application running in a browser.
  
  
  
  

Services

So far we have used representation of the products in the memory of the Java Virtual Machine which is good for local testing, fast turnaround cycles, however it has some drawbacks – if one restarts the application, all changes would be lost, if you have more than one running process of the application the data differs, etc. Let’s address that and add a database as a backing service in the cloud. We can do that without changes in the code. We have to create a service instance, bind it to the application and restage the applicaiton so it starts using the database. Follow the steps below.

1. List the services available for your user with cf marketplace You should see a list of services, short description and information for the service plans.

2. In our example we will use a XSUAA as User Account and Authentication service. To list more information about the service plans, use cf marketplace -s SERVICE:

cf marketplace -s xsuaa

3. Before your application can use a service, you need to create a service instance. Create a XSUAA service instance with cf create-service SERVICE PLAN SERVICE_INSTANCE:

cf create-service xsuaa application 

4. You should now see your newly created XSUAA service. Type in the command prompt:

cf services

You should see in the output the list of services within your space.

5. The last step is to bind the service instance to your application. You can do it with command in CF CLI cf bind-service APP_NAME SERVICE_INSTANCE:

 cf bind-service product-list xsuaa

6. Now that we already have the backing service to ensure that our application environment gets updated we re-stage our application so that the app is wired to use XSUAA as identity management service. Use the following command cf restage APP_NAME:

cf restage product-list

If you list now again the services with cf services, you will see that the XSUAA instance is bound to the product list application.

You can again request the application once it's restaged though there will be no difference now that it uses XSUAA.

💡 Note An alternative to bind services to your application is via the application manifest. When you use manifest.yml to bind services you have to push the application again so that the environment gets updated and the app can use the service. E.g. for this sample you have to add this snippet and then cf push the application again:

services:
 - SERVICE_INSTANCE_NAME

Usually at this point you will have to consume the service instance and adapt your application code. The information how to access the service instance is available now in your application environment as an environment variable VCAP_SERVICES.