Deploying to IBM Cloud

This is a basic guide for deploying a LoopBack 4 (LB4) app toIBM Cloud. In the setup explained below, your app willuse a provisionedCloudant service when runningon the IBM Cloud.

NOTE : Production deployment to IBM Cloud is a much bigger topic with manypossible options, refer to“IBM Cloud Continuous Delivery: Build, deploy, and manage apps with toolchains”for the details.

Before we begin

Make sure you have:

• an account on IBM Cloud. If not, you cansign up here.
• installedCloud Foundry CLI

Preparing your application

We will be using the“todo” examplefrom the loopback-next repositoryas a basis for the instruction.

You can quickly clone the “todo” example app by running the command:

lb4 example todo

Then you can replace the default memory-based connector of the app with aCloudant connector, so data is persisted.

Step 1: Provisioning a Cloudant database service

• Go to theIBM Cloud Catalog, selectCloudant under All Categories > Databases.
• Name your Cloudant service name as myCloudant. Keep the defaults for regionand resource group. Select “Use both legacy credentials and IAM” as theavailable authentication methods

• Click Create.

Step 2: Creating a database named todo.

• Go to your IBM Cloud dashboard.
• Click on myCloudant under Services.

• Click Launch Cloudant Dashboard.

• In the Cloudant dashboard, click Create Database at the top of the page andname it as todo.

Step 3: Updating your DataSource

Update db.datasource.json to use the Cloudant connector. The value for theurl property is just a placeholder and does not need to have the correctcredential because we will be binding the app with the Cloudant service onceit‘s pushed to IBM Cloud.

{
  "name": "db",
  "connector": "cloudant",
  "url": "http://admin:pass@localhost:8080",
  "database": "todo",
  "modelIndex": ""
}

Install the loopback-connector-cloudant package.

$ npm i loopback-connector-cloudant

Step 4: Updating the application

• We will use the cfenv module to simplify some of the Cloud Foundry relatedoperations. Install cfenv in the project directory.

$ npm i cfenv

• Update the src/index.ts file to the following to enable service binding.Add the 3 snippets as indicated below:

import {TodoListApplication} from './application';
import {ApplicationConfig} from '@loopback/core';
// --------- ADD THIS SNIPPET ---------
const datasourceDb = require('./datasources/db.datasource.json');
const cfenv = require('cfenv');
const appEnv = cfenv.getAppEnv();
// --------- ADD THIS SNIPPET ---------

export async function main(options?: ApplicationConfig) {
  // --------- ADD THIS SNIPPET ---------
  // Set the port assined for the app
  if (!options) options = {};
  if (!options.rest) options.rest = {};
  options.rest.port = appEnv.isLocal ? options.rest.port : appEnv.port;
  options.rest.host = appEnv.isLocal ? options.rest.host : appEnv.host;
  // --------- ADD THIS SNIPPET ---------

  const app = new TodoListApplication(options);

  // --------- ADD THIS SNIPPET ---------
  // If running on IBM Cloud, we get the Cloudant service details from VCAP_SERVICES
  if (!appEnv.isLocal) {
    // 'myCloudant' is the name of the provisioned Cloudant service
    const updatedDatasourceDb = Object.assign({}, datasourceDb, {
      url: appEnv.getServiceURL('myCloudant'),
    });
    app.bind('datasources.config.db').to(updatedDatasourceDb);
  }
  // --------- ADD THIS SNIPPET ---------
  await app.boot();
  await app.start();

  const url = app.restServer.url;
  console.log(`Server is running at ${url}`);
  return app;
}

• Remove the prestart script from package.json, since we don‘t want to doany building on the cloud.

Note:

If you make more changes to the application after this point, remember to run npm run build to transpile the code before deploying.

• (Optional) At project root, create a file called .cfignore with thefollowing content:

node_modules/
.vscode/
.git

This step is optional, however, dependencies will be installed duringdeployment and thus node_modules will be generated. It makes the upload ofnode_modules reductant and time consuming.

Step 5: Deploying the application to IBM Cloud

• Use cf login command to login.

If you‘re using a federated user id, you can use the —sso option.

After you‘ve been successfully logged in, you’ll see the CF API endpoint.

API endpoint: https://api.ng.bluemix.net (API version: 2.106.0)

• After logging in, you can run this command:

cf push <<your-app-name>>

The app name in the command is the Cloud Foundry application that will showup in the IBM Cloud dashboard.

Step 6: Binding the Cloudant service to your application

• Go to the IBM Cloud dashboard (<https://cloud.ibm.com/dashboard/apps>).
• Under Cloud Foundry Applications, you should see your application name.Click on it.
• In the “Overview” tab, go to Connections > Create connection.
• Select myCloudant service.
• After the binding is done, you should see it from the Overview page.
• You will be asked to restart your application.

Step 7: Testing your endpoints

• Go to your application page. If you‘re not already in there, it can be foundunder Cloud Foundry Apps in theIBM Cloud dashboard.
• Click Visit App URL to get the URL of your application. It will then bringyou to the API explorer for testing your endpoints.