Google Summer of Code

Read more about the article Using Mosquitto as a Message Broker for MQTT in loklak Server

Using Mosquitto as a Message Broker for MQTT in loklak Server

In loklak server, messages are collected from various sources and indexed using Elasticsearch. To know when a message of interest arrives, users can poll the search endpoint. But this method would require a lot of HTTP requests, most of them being redundant. Also, if a user would like to collect messages for a particular topic, he would need to make a lot of requests over a period of time to get enough data.

For GSoC 2017, my proposal was to introduce stream API in the loklak server so that we could save ourselves from making too many requests and also add many use cases.

Mosquitto is Eclipse’s project which acts as a message broker for the popular MQTT protocol. MQTT, based on the pub-sub model, is a lightweight and IOT friendly protocol. In this blog post, I will discuss the basic setup of Mosquitto in the loklak server.

Installation and Dependency for Mosquitto

The installation process of Mosquitto is very simple. For Ubuntu, it is available from the pre installed PPAs –

sudo apt-get install mosquitto

Once the message broker is up and running, we can use the clients to connect to it and publish/subscribe to channels. To add MQTT client as a project dependency, we can introduce following line in Gradle dependencies file – 

compile group: 'net.sf.xenqtt', name: 'xenqtt', version: '0.9.5'

[SOURCE]

After this, we can use the client libraries in the server code base.

The MQTTPublisher Class

The MQTTPublisher class in loklak would provide an interface to perform basic operations in MQTT. The implementation uses AsyncClientListener to connect to Mosquitto broker – 

AsyncClientListener listener = new AsyncClientListener() {
    // Override methods according to needs
};

[SOURCE]

The publish method for the class can be used by other components of the project to publish messages on the desired channel – 

public void publish(String channel, String message) {
    this.mqttClient.publish(new PublishMessage(channel, QoS.AT_LEAST_ONCE, message));
}

[SOURCE]

We also have methods which allow publishing of multiple messages to multiple channels in order to increase the functionality of the class.

Starting Publisher with Server

The flags which signal using of streaming service in loklak are located in conf/config.properties. These configurations are referred while initializing the Data Access Object and an MQTTPublisher is created if needed – 

String mqttAddress = getConfig("stream.mqtt.address", "tcp://127.0.0.1:1883");
streamEnabled = getConfig("stream.enabled", false);
if (streamEnabled) {
    mqttPublisher = new MQTTPublisher(mqttAddress);
}

[SOURCE]

The mqttPublisher can now be used by other components of loklak to publish messages to the channel they want.

Adding Mosquitto to Kubernetes

Since loklak has also a nice Kubernetes setup, it was very simple to introduce a new deployment for Mosquitto to it.

Changes in Dockerfile

The Dockerfile for master deployment has to be modified to discover Mosquitto broker in the Kubernetes cluster. For this purpose, corresponding flags in config.properties have to be changed to ensure that things work fine – 

sed -i.bak 's/^\(stream.enabled\).*/\1=true/' conf/config.properties && \
sed -i.bak 's/^\(stream.mqtt.address\).*/\1=mosquitto.mqtt:1883/' conf/config.properties && \

[SOURCE]

The Mosquitto broker would be available at mosquitto.mqtt:1883 because of the service that is created for it (explained in later section).

Mosquitto Deployment

The Docker image used in Kubernetes deployment of Mosquitto is taken from toke/docker-kubernetes. Two ports are exposed for the cluster but no volumes are needed – 

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: mosquitto
  namespace: mqtt
spec:
  ...
  template:
    ...
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: mosquitto
        image: toke/mosquitto
        ports:
        - containerPort: 9001
        - containerPort: 8883

[SOURCE]

Exposing Mosquitto to the Cluster

Now that we have the deployment running, we need to expose the required ports to the cluster so that other components may use it. The port 9001 appears as port 80 for the service and 1883 is also exposed – 

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: mosquitto
  namespace: mqtt
  ...
spec:
  ...
  ports:
  - name: mosquitto
    port: 1883
  - name: mosquitto-web
    port: 80
    targetPort: 9001

[SOURCE]

After creating the service using this configuration, we will be able to connect our clients to Mosquitto at address mosquitto.mqtt:1883.

Conclusion

In this blog post, I discussed the process of adding Mosquitto to the loklak server project. This is the first step towards introducing the stream API for messages collected in loklak.

These changes were introduced in pull requests loklak/loklak_server#1393 and loklak/loklak_server#1398 by @singhpratyush (me).

Resources

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Read more about the article Adding a Scroll To Bottom button in SUSI WebChat

Adding a Scroll To Bottom button in SUSI WebChat

SUSI Web Chat now has a scroll-to-bottom button which helps the users to scroll the app automatically to the bottom of the scroll area on button click. When the chat history is lengthy and the user has to scroll down manually it results in a bad UX. So the basic requirements of this scroll-to-bottom button are:

  1. The button must only be displayed when the user has scrolled up the message section
  2. On clicking the scroll-to-bottom button, the scroll area must be automatically scrolled to bottom.

Let’s visit SUSI Web Chat and try this out.

The button is not visible until there are enough messages to enable scrolling and the user has scrolled up. On clicking the button, the app automatically scrolls to the bottom pointing to the most recent message.

How was this implemented?

We first design our scroll-to-bottom button using Material UI  Floating Action Button and SVG Icons. 

import FloatingActionButton from 'material-ui/FloatingActionButton';
import NavigateDown from 'material-ui/svg-icons/navigation/expand-more';

The button needs to be styled to be displayed at a fixed position on the bottom right corner of the message section. Positioning it on top of MessageSection above the MessageComposer, the button is also aligned with respect to the edges.

const scrollBottomStyle = {
  button : {
    float: 'right',
    marginRight: '5px',
    marginBottom: '10px',
    boxShadow:'none',
  },
  backgroundColor: '#fcfcfc',
  icon : {
    fill: UserPreferencesStore.getTheme()==='light' ? '#90a4ae' : '#7eaaaf'
  }
}

The button must only be displayed when the user has scrolled up. To implement this we need a state variable showScrollBottom which must be set to true or false accordingly based on the scroll offset.

{this.state.showScrollBottom &&
  <div className='scrollBottom'>
    <FloatingActionButton mini={true}
      style={scrollBottomStyle.button}
      backgroundColor={scrollBottomStyle.backgroundColor}
      iconStyle={scrollBottomStyle.icon}
      onTouchTap={this.forcedScrollToBottom}>
      <NavigateDown />
    </FloatingActionButton>
  </div>
}

Now we have to set our state variable showScrollBottom corresponding to the scroll offset. It must be set to true is the user has scrolled up and false if the scrollbar is already at the bottom. To implement this we need to listen to the scrolling events. We used react-custom-scrollbars for the scroll area wrapping the message section. We can listen to the scrolling events using the onScroll props. We also need to tag the scroll area using refs to access the scroll area instead of using findDOMNode as it is being deprecated.

import { Scrollbars } from 'react-custom-scrollbars';

<Scrollbars
  ref={(ref) => { this.scrollarea = ref; }}
  onScroll={this.onScroll}
>
  {messageListItems}
</Scrollbars>

Now, whenever a scroll action is performed, the onScroll() function is triggered. We now have to know if the scroll bar is at the bottom or not. We make use of the scroll area’s props to get the scroll offsets. The getValues() function returns an object containing different scroll offsets and scroll area dimensions. We are interested in values.top which tells about the scroll-top’s progress from 0 to 1 i.e when the scroll bar is at the top most point values.top is 0 and when it’s on the bottom most point, values.top is 1. So whenever values.top is 1, showScrollBottom is false else true. 

onScroll = () => {
  let scrollarea = this.scrollarea;
  if(scrollarea){
    let scrollValues = scrollarea.getValues();
    if(scrollValues.top === 1){
      this.setState({
        showScrollBottom: false,
      });
    }
    else if(!this.state.showScrollBottom){
      this.setState({
        showScrollBottom: true,
      });
    }
  }
}

Finally, we need to scroll the chat app to the bottom on button click. Whenever showScrollBottom is updated, the state is changed, so componentDidUpdate is triggered which calls the _scrollToBottom() function. But we should change this to avoid scrolling to bottom on showScrollBottom update and the user is intending to scroll here. We use the function forcedScrollToBottom to be triggered on clicking the scroll-to-bottom button, which resets the scrollTop value to the height of the scroll area, thus pointing the scrollbar to the bottom.

forcedScrollToBottom = () => {
  let ul = this.scrollarea;
  if (ul) {
    ul.scrollTop(ul.getScrollHeight());
  }
}

We don’t have to worry about resetting showScrollBottom on forced scroll to bottom as the scrolling will trigger the onScroll function where the showScrollBottom state is handled accordingly.

This is how the scroll to bottom button has been implemented in SUSI Web Chat. The entire code can be found at SUSI Web Chat Repository.

Resources

 

Continue ReadingAdding a Scroll To Bottom button in SUSI WebChat
Read more about the article Checking Whether Migrations Are Up To Date With The Sqlalchemy Models In The Open Event Server

Checking Whether Migrations Are Up To Date With The Sqlalchemy Models In The Open Event Server

In the Open Event Server, in the pull requests, if there is some change in the sqlalchemy model, sometimes proper migrations for the same are missed in the PR.

The first approach to check whether the migrations were up to date in the database was with the following health check function:

from subprocess import check_output
def health_check_migrations():
   """
   Checks whether database is up to date with migrations, assumes there is a single migration head
   :return:
   """
   head = check_output(["python", "manage.py", "db", "heads"]).split(" ")[0]
   
   if head == version_num:
       return True, 'database up to date with migrations'
   return False, 'database out of date with migrations'

 

In the above function, we get the head according to the migration files as following:

head = check_output(["python", "manage.py", "db", "heads"]).split(" ")[0]


The table alembic_version contains the latest alembic revision to which the database was actually upgraded. We can get this revision from the following line:

version_num = (db.session.execute('SELECT version_num from alembic_version').fetchone())['version_num']

 

Then we compare both of the given heads and return a proper tuple based on the comparison output.While this method was pretty fast, there was a drawback in this approach. If the user forgets to generate the migration files for the the changes done in the sqlalchemy model, this approach will fail to raise a failure status in the health check.

To overcome this drawback, all the sqlalchemy models were fetched automatically and simple sqlalchemy select queries were made to check whether the migrations were up to date.

Remember that a raw SQL query will not serve our purpose in this case as you’d have to specify the columns explicitly in the query. But in the case of a sqlalchemy query, it generates a SQL query based on the fields defined in the db model, so if migrations are missing to incorporate the said change proper error will be raised.

We can accomplish this from the following function:

def health_check_migrations():
   """
   Checks whether database is up to date with migrations by performing a select query on each model
   :return:
   """
   # Get all the models in the db, all models should have a explicit __tablename__
   classes, models, table_names = [], [], []
   # noinspection PyProtectedMember
   for class_ in db.Model._decl_class_registry.values():
       try:
           table_names.append(class_.__tablename__)
           classes.append(class_)
       except:
           pass
   for table in db.metadata.tables.items():
       if table[0] in table_names:
           models.append(classes[table_names.index(table[0])])

   for model in models:
       try:
           db.session.query(model).first()
       except:
           return False, '{} model out of date with migrations'.format(model)
   return True, 'database up to date with migrations'

 

In the above code, we automatically get all the models and tables present in the database. Then for each model we try a simple SELECT query which returns the first row found. If there is any error in doing so, False, ‘{} model out of date with migrations’.format(model) is returned, so as to ensure a failure status in health checks.

Related:

Continue ReadingChecking Whether Migrations Are Up To Date With The Sqlalchemy Models In The Open Event Server
Read more about the article Implementing Health Check Endpoint in Open Event Server

Implementing Health Check Endpoint in Open Event Server

A health check endpoint was required in the Open Event Server be used by Kubernetes to know when the web instance is ready to receive requests.

Following are the checks that were our primary focus for health checks:

  • Connection to the database.
  • Ensure sql-alchemy models are inline with the migrations.
  • Connection to celery workers.
  • Connection to redis instance.

Runscope/healthcheck seemed like the way to go for the same. Healthcheck wraps a Flask app object and adds a way to write simple health-check functions that can be used to monitor your application. It’s useful for asserting that your dependencies are up and running and your application can respond to HTTP requests. The Healthcheck functions are exposed via a user defined flask route so you can use an external monitoring application (monit, nagios, Runscope, etc.) to check the status and uptime of your application.

Health check endpoint was implemented at /health-check as following:

from healthcheck import HealthCheck
health = HealthCheck(current_app, "/health-check")

 

Following is the function for checking the connection to the database:

def health_check_db():
   """
   Check health status of db
   :return:
   """
   try:
       db.session.execute('SELECT 1')
       return True, 'database ok'
   except:
       sentry.captureException()
       return False, 'Error connecting to database'

 

Check functions take no arguments and should return a tuple of (bool, str). The boolean is whether or not the check passed. The message is any string or output that should be rendered for this check. Useful for error messages/debugging.

The above function executes a query on the database to check whether it is connected properly. If the query runs successfully, it returns a tuple True, ‘database ok’. sentry.captureException() makes sure that the sentry instance receives a proper exception event with all the information about the exception. If there is an error connecting to the database, the exception will be thrown. The tuple returned in this case will be return False, ‘Error connecting to database’.

Finally to add this to the endpoint:

health.add_check(health_check_db)

Following is the response for a successful health check:

{
   "status": "success",
   "timestamp": 1500915121.52474,
   "hostname": "shubham",
   "results": [
       {
           "output": "database ok",
           "checker": "health_check_db",
           "expires": 1500915148.524729,
           "passed": true,
           "timestamp": 1500915121.524729
       }
   ]
}

If the database is not connected the following error will be shown:

{
           "output": "Error connecting to database",
           "checker": "health_check_db",
           "expires": 1500965798.307425,
           "passed": false,
           "timestamp": 1500965789.307425
}

Related:

Continue ReadingImplementing Health Check Endpoint in Open Event Server
Read more about the article Deploying loklak Server on Kubernetes with External Elasticsearch

Deploying loklak Server on Kubernetes with External Elasticsearch

Kubernetes is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

– kubernetes.io

Kubernetes is an awesome cloud platform, which ensures that cloud applications run reliably. It runs automated tests, flawless updates, smart roll out and rollbacks, simple scaling and a lot more.

So as a part of GSoC, I worked on taking the loklak server to Kubernetes on Google Cloud Platform. In this blog post, I will be discussing the approach followed to deploy development branch of loklak on Kubernetes.

New Docker Image

Since Kubernetes deployments work on Docker images, we needed one for the loklak project. The existing image would not be up to the mark for Kubernetes as it contained the declaration of volumes and exposing of ports. So I wrote a new Docker image which could be used in Kubernetes.

The image would simply clone loklak server, build the project and trigger the server as CMD –

FROM alpine:latest

ENV LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ENV JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS=-Dfile.encoding=UTF8

WORKDIR /loklak_server

RUN apk update && apk add openjdk8 git bash && \
    git clone https://github.com/loklak/loklak_server.git /loklak_server && \
    git checkout development && \
    ./gradlew build -x test -x checkstyleTest -x checkstyleMain -x jacocoTestReport && \
    # Some Configurations and Cleanups

CMD ["bin/start.sh", "-Idn"]

[SOURCE]

This image wouldn’t have any volumes or exposed ports and we are now free to configure them in the configuration files (discussed in a later section).

Building and Pushing Docker Image using Travis

To automatically build and push on a commit to the master branch, Travis build is used. In the after_success section, a call to push Docker image is made.

Travis environment variables hold the username and password for Docker hub and are used for logging in –

docker login -u $DOCKER_USERNAME -p $DOCKER_PASSWORD

[SOURCE]

We needed checks there to ensure that we are on the right branch for the push and we are not handling a pull request –

# Build and push Kubernetes Docker image
KUBERNETES_BRANCH=loklak/loklak_server:latest-kubernetes-$TRAVIS_BRANCH
KUBERNETES_COMMIT=loklak/loklak_server:kubernetes-$TRAVIS_COMMIT
  
if [ "$TRAVIS_BRANCH" == "development" ]; then
    docker build -t loklak_server_kubernetes kubernetes/images/development
    docker tag loklak_server_kubernetes $KUBERNETES_BRANCH
    docker push $KUBERNETES_BRANCH
    docker tag $KUBERNETES_BRANCH $KUBERNETES_COMMIT
    docker push $KUBERNETES_COMMIT
elif [ "$TRAVIS_BRANCH" == "master" ]; then
    # Build and push master
else
    echo "Skipping Kubernetes image push for branch $TRAVIS_BRANCH"
fi

[SOURCE]

Kubernetes Configurations for loklak

Kubernetes cluster can completely be configured using configurations written in YAML format. The deployment of loklak uses the previously built image. Initially, the image tagged as latest-kubernetes-development is used –

apiVersion: apps/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: server
  namespace: web
spec:
  replicas: 1
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: server
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: server
        image: loklak/loklak_server:latest-kubernetes-development
        ...

[SOURCE]

Readiness and Liveness Probes

Probes act as the top level tester for the health of a deployment in Kubernetes. The probes are performed periodically to ensure that things are working fine and appropriate steps are taken if they fail.

When a new image is updated, the older pod still runs and servers the requests. It is replaced by the new ones only when the probes are successful, otherwise, the update is rolled back.

In loklak, the /api/status.json endpoint gives information about status of deployment and hence is a good target for probes – 

livenessProbe:
  httpGet:
    path: /api/status.json
    port: 80
  initialDelaySeconds: 30
  timeoutSeconds: 3
readinessProbe:
  httpGet:
    path: /api/status.json
    port: 80
  initialDelaySeconds: 30
  timeoutSeconds: 3

[SOURCE]

These probes are performed periodically and the server is restarted if they fail (non-success HTTP status code or takes more than 3 seconds).

Ports and Volumes

In the configurations, port 80 is exposed as this is where Jetty serves inside loklak – 

ports:
- containerPort: 80
  protocol: TCP

[SOURCE]

If we notice, this is the port that we used for running the probes. Since the development branch deployment holds no dumps, we didn’t need to specify any explicit volumes for persistence.

Load Balancer Service

While creating the configurations, a new public IP is assigned to the deployment using Google Cloud Platform’s load balancer. It starts listening on port 80 –

ports:
- containerPort: 80
  protocol: TCP

[SOURCE]

Since this service creates a new public IP, it is recommended not to replace/recreate this services as this would result in the creation of new public IP. Other components can be updated individually.

Kubernetes Configurations for Elasticsearch

To maintain a persistent index, this deployment would require an external Elasticsearch cluster. loklak is able to connect itself to external Elasticsearch cluster by changing a few configurations.

Docker Image and Environment Variables

The image used for Elasticsearch is taken from pires/docker-elasticsearch-kubernetes. It allows easy configuration of properties from environment variables in configurations. Here is a list of configurable variables, but we needed just a few of them to do our task –

image: quay.io/pires/docker-elasticsearch-kubernetes:2.0.0
env:
- name: KUBERNETES_CA_CERTIFICATE_FILE
  value: /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/ca.crt
- name: NAMESPACE
  valueFrom:
    fieldRef:
      fieldPath: metadata.namespace
- name: "CLUSTER_NAME"
  value: "loklakcluster"
- name: "DISCOVERY_SERVICE"
  value: "elasticsearch"
- name: NODE_MASTER
  value: "true"
- name: NODE_DATA
  value: "true"
- name: HTTP_ENABLE
  value: "true"

[SOURCE]

Persistent Index using Persistent Cloud Disk

To make the index last even after the deployment is stopped, we needed a stable place where we could store all that data. Here, Google Compute Engine’s standard persistent disk was used. The disk can be created using GCP web portal or the gcloud CLI.

Before attaching the disk, we need to declare a volume where we could mount it – 

volumeMounts:
- mountPath: /data
  name: storage

[SOURCE]

Now that we have a volume, we can simply mount the persistent disk on it –

volumes:
- name: storage
  gcePersistentDisk:
    pdName: data-index-disk
    fsType: ext4

[SOURCE]

Now, whenever we deploy these configurations, we can reuse the previous index.

Exposing Kubernetes to Cluster

The HTTP and transport clients are enabled on port 9200 and 9300 respectively. They can be exposed to the rest of the cluster using the following service – 

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
...
Spec:
  ...
  ports:
  - name: http
    port: 9200
    protocol: TCP
  - name: transport
    port: 9300
    protocol: TCP

[SOURCE]

Once deployed, other deployments can access the cluster API from ports 9200 and 9300.

Connecting loklak to Kubernetes

To connect loklak to external Elasticsearch cluster, TransportClient Java API is used. In order to enable these settings, we simply need to make some changes in configurations.

Since we enable the service named “elasticsearch” in namespace “elasticsearch”, we can access the cluster at address elasticsearch.elasticsearch:9200 (web) and elasticsearch.elasticsearch:9300 (transport).

To confine these changes only to Kubernetes deployment, we can use sed command while building the image (in Dockerfile) –

sed -i.bak 's/^\(elasticsearch_transport.enabled\).*/\1=true/' conf/config.properties && \
sed -i.bak 's/^\(elasticsearch_transport.addresses\).*/\1=elasticsearch.elasticsearch:9300/' conf/config.properties && \

[SOURCE]

Now when we create the deployments in Kubernetes cluster, loklak auto connects to the external elasticsearch index and creates indices if needed.

Verifying persistence of the Elasticsearch Index

In order to see that the data persists, we can completely delete the deployment or even the cluster if we want. Later, when we recreate the deployment, we can see all the messages already present in the index.

I  [2017-07-29 09:42:51,804][INFO ][node                     ] [Hellion] initializing ...
 
I  [2017-07-29 09:42:52,024][INFO ][plugins                  ] [Hellion] loaded [cloud-kubernetes], sites []
 
I  [2017-07-29 09:42:52,055][INFO ][env                      ] [Hellion] using [1] data paths, mounts [[/data (/dev/sdb)]], net usable_space [84.9gb], net total_space [97.9gb], spins? [possibly], types [ext4]
 
I  [2017-07-29 09:42:53,543][INFO ][node                     ] [Hellion] initialized
 
I  [2017-07-29 09:42:53,543][INFO ][node                     ] [Hellion] starting ...
 
I  [2017-07-29 09:42:53,620][INFO ][transport                ] [Hellion] publish_address {10.8.1.13:9300}, bound_addresses {10.8.1.13:9300}
 
I  [2017-07-29 09:42:53,633][INFO ][discovery                ] [Hellion] loklakcluster/cJtXERHETKutq7nujluJvA
 
I  [2017-07-29 09:42:57,866][INFO ][cluster.service          ] [Hellion] new_master {Hellion}{cJtXERHETKutq7nujluJvA}{10.8.1.13}{10.8.1.13:9300}{master=true}, reason: zen-disco-join(elected_as_master, [0] joins received)
 
I  [2017-07-29 09:42:57,955][INFO ][http                     ] [Hellion] publish_address {10.8.1.13:9200}, bound_addresses {10.8.1.13:9200}
 
I  [2017-07-29 09:42:57,955][INFO ][node                     ] [Hellion] started
 
I  [2017-07-29 09:42:58,082][INFO ][gateway                  ] [Hellion] recovered [8] indices into cluster_state

In the last line from the logs, we can see that indices already present on the disk were recovered. Now if we head to the public IP assigned to the cluster, we can see that the message count is restored.

Conclusion

In this blog post, I discussed how we utilised the Kubernetes setup to shift loklak to Google Cloud Platform. The deployment is active and can be accessed from the link provided under wiki section of loklak/loklak_server repo.

I introduced these changes in pull request loklak/loklak_server#1349 with the help of @niranjan94, @uday96 and @chiragw15.

Resources

Continue ReadingDeploying loklak Server on Kubernetes with External Elasticsearch
Read more about the article Caching Elasticsearch Aggregation Results in loklak Server

Caching Elasticsearch Aggregation Results in loklak Server

To provide aggregated data for various classifiers, loklak uses Elasticsearch aggregations. Aggregated data speaks a lot more than a few instances from it can say. But performing aggregations on each request can be very resource consuming. So we needed to come up with a way to reduce this load.

In this post, I will be discussing how I came up with a caching model for the aggregated data from the Elasticsearch index.

Fields to Consider while Caching

At the classifier endpoint, aggregations can be requested based on the following fields –

  • Classifier Name
  • Classifier Classes
  • Countries
  • Start Date
  • End Date

But to cache results, we can ignore cases where we just require a few classes or countries and store aggregations for all of them instead. So the fields that will define the cache to look for will be –

  • Classifier Name
  • Start Date
  • End Date

Type of Cache

The data structure used for caching was Java’s HashMap. It would be used to map a special string key to a special object discussed in a later section.

Key

The key is built using the fields mentioned previously – 

private static String getKey(String index, String classifier, String sinceDate, String untilDate) {
    return index + "::::"
        + classifier + "::::"
        + (sinceDate == null ? "" : sinceDate) + "::::"
        + (untilDate == null ? "" : untilDate);
}

[SOURCE]

In this way, we can handle requests where a user makes a request for every class there is without running the expensive aggregation job every time. This is because the key for such requests will be same as we are not considering country and class for this purpose.

Value

The object used as key in the HashMap is a wrapper containing the following –

  1. json – It is a JSONObject containing the actual data.
  2. expiry – It is the expiry of the object in milliseconds.

class JSONObjectWrapper {
    private JSONObject json; 
    private long expiry;
    ... 
}

Timeout

The timeout associated with a cache is defined in the configuration file of the project as “classifierservlet.cache.timeout”. It defaults to 5 minutes and is used to set the eexpiryof a cached JSONObject –

class JSONObjectWrapper {
    ...
    private static long timeout = DAO.getConfig("classifierservlet.cache.timeout", 300000);

    JSONObjectWrapper(JSONObject json) {
        this.json = json;
        this.expiry = System.currentTimeMillis() + timeout;
    }
    ...
}

 

Cache Hit

For searching in the cache, the previously mentioned string is composed from the parameters requested by the user. Checking for a cache hit can be done in the following manner – 

String key = getKey(index, classifier, sinceDate, untilDate);
if (cacheMap.keySet().contains(key)) {
    JSONObjectWrapper jw = cacheMap.get(key);
    if (!jw.isExpired()) {
        // Do something with jw
    }
}
// Calculate the aggregations
...

But since jw here would contain all the data, we would need to filter out the classes and countries which are not needed.

Filtering results

For filtering out the parts which do not contain the information requested by the user, we can perform a simple pass and exclude the results that are not needed.

Since the number of fields to filter out, i.e. classes and countries, would not be that high, this process would not be that resource intensive. And at the same time, would save us from requesting heavy aggregation tasks from the user.

Since the data about classes is nested inside the respective country field, we need to perform two level of filtering – 

JSONObject retJson = new JSONObject(true);
for (String key : json.keySet()) {
    JSONArray value = filterInnerClasses(json.getJSONArray(key), classes);
    if ("GLOBAL".equals(key) || countries.contains(key)) {
        retJson.put(key, value);
    }
}

Cache Miss

In the case of a cache miss, the helper functions are called from ElasticsearchClient.java to get results. These results are then parsed from HashMap to JSONObject and stored in the cache for future usages.

JSONObject freshCache = getFromElasticsearch(index, classifier, sinceDate, untilDate);
cacheMap.put(key, new JSONObjectWrapper(freshCache));

The getFromElasticsearch method finds all the possible classes and makes a request to the appropriate method in ElasticsearchClient, getting data for all classifiers and all countries.

Conclusion

In this blog post, I discussed the need for caching of aggregations and the way it is achieved in the loklak server. This feature was introduced in pull request loklak/loklak_server#1333 by @singhpratyush (me).

Resources

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Read more about the article Upload Images to OwnCloud and NextCloud in Phimpme Android

Upload Images to OwnCloud and NextCloud in Phimpme Android

As increasing the stack of account manager in Phimpme Android. We have now two new items OwnCloud and NextCloud to add. Both are open source storage services. Provides complete source code of their official apps and libraries on Github. You can check below

OwnCloud: https://github.com/owncloud

NextCloud: https://github.com/nextcloud

This requires a hosting server, where you can deploy it and access it through their web app and Mobile apps. I added a feature in Phimpme to upload images directly to the server right from the app using their android-library.

Steps (How I did in Phimpme)

  • Add library in Application gradle file

Firstly, to work with, we need to add the android-library they provide.

compile "com.github.nextcloud:android-library:$rootProject.nextCloudVersion"

Check the new version from here and apply over it: https://github.com/nextcloud/android-library/releases

  • Login from Account Manager

As per our Phimpme app flow, User first connect itself from the account manager and then share image from app using these credentials. Added a new Login activity for OwnCloud and NextCloud both.

          

  • Saved credentials in Database

To use that further in android-library, I store the credentials in Realm database.

account.setServerUrl(data.getStringExtra(getString(R.string.server_url)));
account.setUsername(data.getStringExtra(getString(R.string.auth_username)));
account.setPassword(data.getStringExtra(getString(R.string.auth_password)));

  • Uploading image using library

As per the official guide of OwnCloud, used Created an object of OwnCloudClient. Set the username and password.

private OwnCloudClient mClient;
mClient = OwnCloudClientFactory.createOwnCloudClient(serverUri, this, true);
mClient.setCredentials(
       OwnCloudCredentialsFactory.newBasicCredentials(
               username,
               password
       )
);

Passed the image path which we are getting in the SharingActivity. Modified with adding the separator.

File fileToUpload = new File(saveFilePath);
String remotePath = FileUtils.PATH_SEPARATOR + fileToUpload.getName();

Used the UploadRemoteOperation Class and just need to pass the path, mimeType and timeStamp. The library have already defined functions to execute the upload operations.

UploadRemoteFileOperation uploadOperation =
       new UploadRemoteFileOperation(fileToUpload.getAbsolutePath(), remotePath, mimeType, timeStamp);
uploadOperation.execute(mClient, this, mHandler);

  • Setup Account using Docker and Digital Ocean

I have already a previous blog post on how to setup NextCloud or OwnCloud account on server using Digital Ocean and Docker.

Link: https://blog.fossasia.org/how-to-use-digital-ocean-and-docker-to-setup-test-cms-for-phimpme/

Resource:

  1. NextCloud Developer Mannual: https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/9/developer_manual/index.html
  2. OwnCloud Library installation: https://doc.owncloud.org/server/9.0/developer_manual/android_library/library_installation.html
  3. Examples: https://doc.owncloud.org/server/9.0/developer_manual/android_library/examples.html
Continue ReadingUpload Images to OwnCloud and NextCloud in Phimpme Android
Read more about the article Common Utility classes Progress Bar and Snack Bar in Phimpme Android

Common Utility classes Progress Bar and Snack Bar in Phimpme Android

As the Phimpme Android is scaling very fast on its features, code gets redundant sometimes. Some of the widely used design widgets in Android are Progress Bar and Snack Bar. Progress Bar is shown to user when some process is happening in the background. Snackbar is a feedback operation to user of its recent process. In other words we can say Snackbar is the new toast in Android with a cool feature of setting action on them. So that User can interact with the feedback received on the process.

As In Phimpme lots of account Login and Logout progress happens. Uploading success and failure required Snackbar to show to the Users. So to remove the redundancy of the boilerplate of these codes, I added two Utilities class one is Phimpme ProgressbarHandler and other is SnackbarHandler in the app. Below is one by one code and explanation of both.

Progress Bar Handler

In the constructor I passed Context as parameter. Created a ViewGroup object and set view of android. Setting the progress bar style and length using Android core attributes such as progressBarStyleLarge and duration to setIndeterminate true.

private ProgressBar mProgressBar;

public PhimpmeProgressBarHandler(Context context) {
   ViewGroup layout = (ViewGroup) ((Activity) context).findViewById(android.R.id.content)
           .getRootView();

   mProgressBar = new ProgressBar(context, null, android.R.attr.progressBarStyleLarge);
   mProgressBar.setIndeterminate(true);



   RelativeLayout.LayoutParams params = new
           RelativeLayout.LayoutParams(RelativeLayout.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,
           RelativeLayout.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT);

   RelativeLayout rl = new RelativeLayout(context);

   rl.setGravity(Gravity.CENTER);
   rl.addView(mProgressBar);

   layout.addView(rl, params);

   hide();

}

Next is used dynamically created Relative Layout object and setup the parameters for width and height as MATCH_PARENT. Setting gravity of the layout to center and added the progress bar view on it using the addView method. So basically we have a progress bar ready and we dynamically created a relative layout and added the view over it.

The function used in setting up the views and progress bar are from AOSP only.

After that a Progressbar is set, we now need functions to show and hide the progress bar in the code. Created two functions show() and hide().

public void show() {
   mProgressBar.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
}

public void hide() {
   mProgressBar.setVisibility(View.INVISIBLE);
}

These functions set the visibility of the the progress bar.

Usage:

Now in any class we can create object of our Progressbar handler class pass the context on it and use the show() and hide() methods wherever we want to show this and hide. Below is the code snippet to show the illustration.

phimpmeProgressBarHandler = new PhimpmeProgressBarHandler(this);

phimpmeProgressBarHandler.show();

phimpmeProgressBarHandler.hide();

Snackbar Handler

To do this, I created a separate class as Snackbar Handler. What we can do is to create a static function show() and inside the declaration, we can create an object of Snackbar and apply the styles to that.

As you can see in the code snippet below, I Created a static function with parameters such as View (to take the view instance), String (to show the message) and duration  of the Snackbar. Set Up the text, textsize and action on the snackbar. An “OK” action is predefined in the function only.

public static void show(View view, String text, int duration) {
   final Snackbar snackbar = Snackbar.make(view, text, duration);
   View sbView = snackbar.getView();
   TextView textView = (TextView)sbView.findViewById(android

.support.design.R.id.snackbar_text);
   textView.setTextColor(Color.WHITE);
   textView.setTextSize(12);
   snackbar.setAction("OK", new View.OnClickListener() {
       @Override
       public void onClick(View view) {
           snackbar.dismiss();
       }
   });
   snackbar.show();
}

Usage:

To use this directly call the show method pass the view and String of the message which you want to show on Snackbar. There are overloaded methods as well in which you can pass the durations. See the below code as example.

SnackBarHandler.show(parentLayout, getString(R.string.no_account_signed_in));

Resources

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Read more about the article Adding Color Options in loklak Media Wall

Adding Color Options in loklak Media Wall

Color options in loklak media wall gives user the ability to set colors for different elements of the media wall. Taking advantage of Angular two-way data binding property and ngrx/store, we can link up the CSS properties of the elements with concerned state properties which stores the user-selected color. This makes color customization fast and reactive for media walls.

In this blog here, I am explaining the unidirectional workflow using ngrx for updating various colors and working of color customization.

Flow Chart

The flowchart below explains how the color as a string is taken as an input from the user and how actions, reducers and component observables link up to change the current CSS property of the font color.

Working

Designing Models: It is important at first to design model which must contain every CSS color property that can be customized. A single interface for a particular HTML element of media wall can be added so that color customization for a particular element can take at once with faster rendering. Here we have three interfaces:

  • WallHeader
  • WallBackground
  • WallCard

These three interfaces are the models for the three core components of the media wall that can be customized.

export interface WallHeader {
backgroundColor: string;
fontColor: string;
}
export interface WallBackground {
backgroundColor: string;
}
export interface WallCard {
fontColor: string;
backgroundColor: string;
accentColor: string;
}

 

Creating Actions: Next step is to design actions for customization. Here we need to pass the respective interface model as a payload with updated color properties. These actions when dispatched causes reducer to change the respective state property, and hence, the linked CSS color property.

export class WallHeaderPropertiesChangeAction implements Action {
type = ActionTypes.WALL_HEADER_PROPERTIES_CHANGE;constructor(public payload: WallHeader) { }
}
export class WallBackgroundPropertiesChangeAction implements Action {
type = ActionTypes.WALL_BACKGROUND_PROPERTIES_CHANGE;constructor(public payload: WallBackground) { }
}
export class WallCardPropertiesChangeAction implements Action {
type = ActionTypes.WALL_CARD_PROPERTIES_CHANGE;constructor(public payload: WallCard) { }
}

 

Creating reducers: Now, we can proceed to create reducer functions so as to change the current state property. Moreover, we need to define an initial state which is the default state for uncustomized media wall. Actions can now be linked to update state property using this reducer when dispatched. These state properties serve two purposes:

  • Updating Query params for Direct URL.
  • Updating Media wall Colors

case mediaWallCustomAction.ActionTypes.WALL_HEADER_PROPERTIES_CHANGE: {
const wallHeader = action.payload;return Object.assign({}, state, {
wallHeader
});
}case mediaWallCustomAction.ActionTypes.WALL_BACKGROUND_PROPERTIES_CHANGE: {
const wallBackground = action.payload;return Object.assign({}, state, {
wallBackground
});
}case mediaWallCustomAction.ActionTypes.WALL_CARD_PROPERTIES_CHANGE: {
const wallCard = action.payload;return Object.assign({}, state, {
wallCard
});
}

 

Extracting Data to the component from the store: In ngrx, the central container for states is the store. Store is itself an observable and returns observable related to state properties. We have already defined various states for media wall color options and now we can use selectors to return state observables from the store. These observables can now easily be linked to the CSS of the elements which changes according to customization.

private getDataFromStore(): void {
this.wallCustomHeader$ = this.store.select(fromRoot.getMediaWallCustomHeader);
this.wallCustomCard$ = this.store.select(fromRoot.getMediaWallCustomCard);
this.wallCustomBackground$ = this.store.select(fromRoot.getMediaWallCustomBackground);
}

 

Linking state observables to the CSS properties: At first, it is important to remove all the CSS color properties from the elements that need to be customized. Now, we will instead use style directive provided by Angular in the template which can be used to update CSS properties directly from the component variables. Since the customized color received from the central store are observables, we need to use the async pipe to extract string color data from it.

Here, we are updating background color of the wall.

<span class=“wrapper”
[style.background-color]=“(wallCustomBackground$ | async).backgroundColor”>
</span>

 

For other child components, we need to use @Input Decorator to send color data as an input to it and use the style directive as used above.

Here, we are interacting with the child component i.e. media wall card component using @Input Decorator.

Template:

<media-wall-card
[feedItem]=“item”
[wallCustomCard$]=“wallCustomCard$”></media-wall-card>

 

Component:

export class MediaWallCardComponent implements OnInit {
..
@Input() feedItem: ApiResponseResult;
@Input() wallCustomCard$: Observable<WallCard>;
..
}

 

This creates a perfect binding of CSS properties in the template with the state properties of color actions. Now, we can dispatch different actions to update the state and hence, the colors of media wall.

Reference

Continue ReadingAdding Color Options in loklak Media Wall
Read more about the article Supporting Dasherized Attributes and Query Params in flask-rest jsonapi for Open Event Server

Supporting Dasherized Attributes and Query Params in flask-rest jsonapi for Open Event Server

In the Open Event API Server project attributes of the API are dasherized.

What was the need for dasherizing the attributes in the API ?

All the attributes in our database models are separated by underscores i.e first name would be stored as first_name. But most of the API client implementations support dasherized attributes by default. In order to attract third party client implementations in the future and making the API easy to set up for them was the primary reason behind this decision.Also to quote the official json-api spec recommendation for the same:

Member names SHOULD contain only the characters “a-z” (U+0061 to U+007A), “0-9” (U+0030 to U+0039), and the hyphen minus (U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS, “-“) as separator between multiple words.

Note: The dasherized version for first_name will be first-name.

flask-rest-jsonapi is the API framework used by the project. We were able to dasherize the API responses and requests by adding inflect=dasherize to each API schema, where dasherize is the following function:

def dasherize(text):
   return text.replace('_', '-')

 

flask-rest-jsonapi also provides powerful features like the following through query params:

But we observed that the query params were not being dasherized which rendered the above awesome features useless 🙁 . The reason for this was that flask-rest-jsonapi took the query params as-is and search for them in the API schema. As Python variable names cannot contain a dash, naming the attributes with a dash in the internal API schema was out of the question.

For adding dasherizing support to the query params, change in the QueryStringManager located at querystring.py of the framework root are required. A config variable named DASHERIZE_APIwas added to turn this feature on and off.

Following are the changes required for dasherizing query params:

For Sparse Fieldsets in the fields function, replace the following line:

result[key] = [value]
with
if current_app.config['DASHERIZE_API'] is True:
    result[key] = [value.replace('-', '_')]
else:
    result[key] = [value]

 

For sorting, in the sorting function, replace the following line:

field = sort_field.replace('-', '')

with

if current_app.config['DASHERIZE_API'] is True:
   field = sort_field[0].replace('-', '') + sort_field[1:].replace('-', '_')
else:
   field = sort_field[0].replace('-', '') + sort_field[1:]

 

For Include related objects, in include function, replace the following line:

return include_param.split(',') if include_param else []

with

if include_param:
   param_results = []
   for param in include_param.split(','):
       if current_app.config['DASHERIZE_API'] is True:
           param = param.replace('-', '_')
       param_results.append(param)
   return param_results
return []

Related links:

Continue ReadingSupporting Dasherized Attributes and Query Params in flask-rest jsonapi for Open Event Server