Deploy an Application to the Remote Server

With Git prepared on both the local workstation and on the remote server, I can now deploy my application.

Defining a Remote Repository

In order to deploy an application from my development workstation to istarelworkshop.com, I need to configure the application repository on my workstation such that is can communicate with the repository on the production server.

Here is the current configuration for the Istarel Workshop application:

cd ~/Sites/iw
cat .git/config

[core]
    repositoryformatversion = 0
    filemode = true
    bare = false
    logallrefupdates = true
    ignorecase = true

Now I configure this repository with user and path information on the remote Git repository. (Note that the 1158 in the remote declaration is the port, for cases where ssh is not listening to its standard port 22.)

git remote add istarelworkshop ssh://git@www.istarelworkshop.com:1158/var/git/iw
cat .git/config

If I look at the configuration for the local repository now, I see the definition for "istarelworkshop".

[core]
    repositoryformatversion = 0
    filemode = true
    bare = false
    logallrefupdates = true
    ignorecase = true
[remote "istarelworkshop"]
    url = ssh://git@www.istarelworkshop.com:1158/var/git/iw
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/istarelworkshop/*

Cloning a Bare Repository

With the description of the remote repository done, I can now deploy the application.

git push istarelworkshop master

I am not done yet, though. The repositorities I set up on istarelworkshop.com are bare repositories; that is, they contain all the branches and history but are not a working repository. I need to clone that bare repository to the appropriate location on istarelworkshop.com. In an earlier article, I showed how to set up Apache2 virtual hosts. The first such host has its base directory at /var/www/istarelworkshop.com. I need to take the bare repository and clone it to that location.

ssh markf@www.istarelworkshop.com
cd /var/www
sudo git clone /var/git/iw istarelworkshop.com
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data istarelworkshop.com

Configure the Remote Application

Back when I set up the local repository, I made sure that certain key configuration files were not part of the repository. This is important because every server is different, and the key paths and identities used on my local workstation are quite different from the Ubuntu VPS I deployed. So, I need to create those configuration files on istarelworkshop.com.

iwuser$ sudo su - www-data
bash
cd /var/www/istarelworkshop.com
mkdir conf && cd conf
vi ApplicationConstants.php

Listing: /var/www/istarelworkshop.com/conf/ApplicationConstants.php

# Fundamental Application Mode
define('IN_PRODUCTION', 1);             # 0 = Development, 1 = Production

# Application Directories
define('APPL_ROOT_DIR', '/');
define('APPL_RSRC_DIR', '/var/www/istarelworkshop.com/rsrc/');

# Istarel Workshop Frameworks Directory
if (! defined('FRAMEWORK_DIR'))
   define('FRAMEWORK_DIR', '/var/www/istarelworkshop.com/fw/');

# Supplemental Directories Required by Application Frameworks Classes
define('APPL_IMG_DIR', APPL_ROOT_DIR . 'img/');
define('APPL_LIB_DIR', APPL_ROOT_DIR . 'lib/');

# Define the Application Database attributes
define('DB_TYPE',       'pgsql');
define('DB_HOST',       'localhost');
define('DB_NAME',       'iw');
define('DB_USERNAME',   'iwdb');
define('DB_PASSWORD',   'secret');

The application framework uses Apache's mod_rewrite system to power the Front Controller. I need to create an .htaccess file at the root of the repository to ensure that proper routing happens.

Listing: /var/www/istarelworkshop.com/.htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule !\.(js|ico|gif|jpg|png|css)$ index.php