Extreme Startup

For this exercise, we will use an automated build pipeline to deploy a simple web application.

Set Up a Build Pipeline

1. Fork our web app on GitHub, clone it, and get it running locally

• Fork this repo to your GitHub account.
• Clone your fork locally and import the code into your IDE. It’s a Java / Gradle project.
• Run the main method in ServerApplication. Then you can see the app running at http://localhost:8080.
• Alternatively, you can also use the ./gradlew bootRun command to run the application.

2. Setting up deployment to the cloud using Docker and Render

• Create a Docker account at https://hub.docker.com/signup (you will get an email asking for confirmation).
• Install Docker on your machine (see https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/).
• (Only for non Docker Desktop users) If you already have docker installed, and are not using Docker Desktop, make sure to install docker-buildx
• Create a Render account at https://dashboard.render.com/.
• Navigate to your Account Settings, scroll to the bottom and enable Early Access. Without this step, you will not be able to use Docker for your deployments.

3. Building the Docker image

Note: in this guide, we will be using 0.0.1 as our tag, this will simplify the process, but in a real world scenario, you can use any tag you like.

• Create a new Docker repository in Docker Hub. You can name it whatever you like, just make sure to remember the name (you will need it later) and make the repository public. In our example, we will call it anontutor/basic-web-app
• Make sure that you are logged into your Docker account by running docker login.
• If you are using Mac/Linux: edit the build.sh file according to the instructions in the file.
• If you are using Windows: edit the build.bat file according to the instructions in the file.
• Run the script to build the Docker image. You can do this by running ./build.sh (Mac/Linux) or build.bat (Windows). Note: you can safely ignore the line containing ERROR: context builder cannot be removed, run `docker context rm default` to remove this content
• If the build is successful, you should see the image in your Docker Hub repository, at https://hub.docker.com/repository/docker/your-username/basic-web-app. In our example, it is at https://hub.docker.com/repository/docker/anontutor/basic-web-app.

4. Deploying to Render

• Create a new Web Service at https://dashboard.render.com/ and choose Deploy an existing image from a registry
• The image url should have the following format: your-username/basic-web-app:0.0.1. In our example, it is anontutor/basic-web-app:0.0.1
• Give your Web Service a name, for example basic-web-app and for the region select Frankfurt
• Wait for the deployment to finish and you are done!
• You can now access your app at the URL provided to you by Render, which you should be able to see in the top left corner of the page.