Introduction to SEV

How many times have you been facing a situation when you have some dockerized application which stores its configuration on the filesystem?

What's a problem you may ask.
In a usual Docker world we would prefer to override or even initialize configuration parameters over environment variables.

Why is that ?
By design all Docker containers are stateless.

That means, by default, working with stateful techniques in Docker (filesystem is one of those) increases complexity and operational costs.

Real-life example

Introductory

Let's assume we have a single-page-application (ReactJS). That application consists of some usual static content:

• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript
• Assets (images, icons, etc.)

We have 3 environments:

• development
• qa
• production

And using Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics for collecting data of user activities.

Important Note We must segregate user activities data between environments, meaning each environment has its unique Adobe Analytics URL and Google Analytics URL defined in index.html file.

...
<script
  src="//assets.adobedtm.com/some/path/analytics-for-environment.min.js"
  async
></script>
<script
  src="test.url.com/analytics.js?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=spring_sale"
  async
></script>
...

Dockerizing

For usual web applications we normally use nginx Docker image and populate it with static content.

FROM nginx:alpine

# copy nginx configuration
COPY nginx/default.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/

# copy static content
COPY dist/ /html

# run nginx
CMD ["/bin/sh", "-c", "nginx -g 'daemon off;'"]

Problem statement

How would you deploy that Docker image and adjust Adobe Analytics URL and Google Analytics URL according to the specifc environment ?

Option 1 Compile static content per environment. - very time consuming and inefficient

Option 2 Set environment variables and utilize bash. - tricky, complex and messy

Option 3 Many other options are available, but with operational and complexity overheads.

Solution

This is where the sev comes handy.

Introduction

sev is a CLI utility written in Golang.

Usage example

Let's change our index.html:

...
<script
  src="_{ADOBE_ANALYTICS_URL}_"
  async
></script>
<script
  src="_{GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_URL}_"
  async
></script>
...

Good time to put sev in action

# First, let's define and initialize environment variables:
export ADOBE_ANALYTICS_URL=//assets.adobedtm.com/sc99ai/a9da01/launch-dif9-staging.min.js
export GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_URL=//test.url.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=spring_sale

export VAR_NAMES_STORAGE=ADOBE_ANALYTICS_URL,GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_URL

# execute sev
sev /html/index.html

Sample sev output

##### START SEV ANNOUNCEMENT ##### 
 
## Target environment variables 
  ADOBE_ANALYTICS_URL=//assets.adobedtm.com/sc99ai/a9da01/launch-dif9-staging.min.js
  GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_URL=//test.url.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=spring_sale
 
 
## Sets of values 
N/A 
 
## Mode 
  Pulling values for variables from environment 
 
###### END SEV ANNOUNCEMENT ###### 
 
2020/04/20 13:01:51 INFO: sev succeeded: /html/index.html 

Checking index.html processed by sev

...
<script
  src="//assets.adobedtm.com/sc99ai/a9da01/launch-dif9-staging.min.js"
  async
></script>
<script
  src="//test.url.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=spring_sale"
  async
></script>
...

Final Docker Image

The final Docker image implemented with sevmakes maintenance of our application's parameters simple, straight-forward and informative

Dockerfile

FROM nginx:alpine

# copy nginx configuration
COPY nginx/default.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/

# copy static content
COPY dist/ /html

# developers explicitly define and maintain VAR_NAMES_STORAGE in Dockerfile so that operations engineers could always use it as a reference and source of truth for the list of configuration parameters
ENV VAR_NAMES_STORAGE ADOBE_ANALYTICS_URL,GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_URL

# run sev and then run nginx
CMD ["/bin/sh", "-c", "sev /html && nginx -g 'daemon off;'"]

Explaining how sev works

Syntax

sev /html/index.html

• /html/index.html is destination
• destination can be path to a file
• or path to a directory

Simple mode (example-1)

In this mode we simply replace placeholders in files with the corresponding environment variables values.

Service environment variables

We have a sevice environment variables which are used to initialize sev.

VAR_NAMES_STORAGE

Stores the list of environment variables names which should be processed by sev.

Example

export VAR_NAMES_STORAGE=ADOBE_ANALYTICS_URL,GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_URL
# you can separate environment variable names with comma

Processing stage

• sev recursively processes each file provided in destination
• in each file sev replaces placeholders like _{ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE}_ with the corresponding value of ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE

Pipeline mode (example-2)

In this mode we provide a JSON structure which contains sets of values of environment variables segregated by identifier.

Service environment variables

VAR_NAMES_STORAGE

Serves the same purpose as in simple mode

Example

export environment-variable-4=some-value-4
export check=in_environment

export VAR_NAMES_STORAGE=environment-variable-4,check

VAR_VALUES_SETS_STORAGE

Stores the JSON structure which contains the sets of values.

Syntax

{
  "set-of-values-identifier-1": {
    "variable-1": "the-value-v1-mk1"
  },
  "set-of-values-identifier-2": {
    "variable-1": "the-value-v1-mk2",
    "variable-2": "the-value-v2"
  },
  "set-of-values-identifier-3": {
    "variable-1": "the-value-v1-mk3",
    "variable-3": "the-value-v3"
  }
}

Example

{
   "akamai-prod":{
      "check":"in-structure",
      "cntf_space":"9bnj36vfwq8e",
      "cntf_token":"asd-AsdAsdAsdAsdAsdD-_AsdAsdAsdAsdAsd-As60",
      "cntf_env":"master",
      "chtr_log_level":0
   },
   "akamai":{
      "cntf_space":"asd234asd123asd",
      "cntf_token":"asd-AsdAsdAsdAsdAsdD-_AsdAsdAsdAsdAsd-As60",
      "cntf_env":"chatr-qa1",
      "chtr_log_level":1
   },
   "dev":{
      "cntf_space":"asd456asd123asd",
      "cntf_token":"asd-AsdAsdAsdAsdAsdD-_AsdAsdAsdAsdAsd-As60",
      "cntf_env":"chatr-dev",
      "chtr_log_level":1
   }
}

VAR_VALUES_SETS_CHOSEN_ID

Contains the identifier for preferred set of values.

Example

export VAR_VALUES_SETS_CHOSEN_ID=akamai-prod

Sample output

##### START SEV ANNOUNCEMENT #####

## Target environment variables
  environment-variable-4 = some-value-4
  check = in_environment


## Sets of values
► akamai-prod
  akamai
  dev


## Fetched values
  chtr_log_level = 0
  check = in-structure
  cntf_space = asd234asd123asd
  cntf_token = asd-AsdAsdAsdAsdAsdD-_AsdAsdAsdAsdAsd-As60
  cntf_env = master


## Mode
  Pulling sets of values for variables from JSON structure saved at {env.VAR_VALUES_SETS_STORAGE}

###### END SEV ANNOUNCEMENT ######

2020/04/21 15:01:00 INFO: sev succeeded: test-dir\sample_to_process
2020/04/21 15:01:00 INFO: sev succeeded: test-dir\sub\sample_to_process

Process finished with exit code 0

Important note

If you have environment variable intialized both in JSON struct and in the environment then the value taken from environment will prevail and get higher priority.