The task: To scrape a javascript-heavy web page you will need a web browser to load the dynamic page into. To automate the browser, you will need something like Puppeteer or Selenium. We opted for the selenium-webdriver gem with Google-chrome running in headless mode. It was useful to install the chrome dev package locally for developing and testing. However running this way in production wont cut it. The Rails App server will grind to a halt after some hours when it eventually runs out of memory. ... Read more

How we successfully used Kamal to leave AWS Beanstalk and deploy anywhere. We were new to containers, so this was part of the learning curve as well. In Part 1 We simply wanted to replicate the example by DHH and use Kamal to deploy to a single server on Hetzner. Includes some errors we overcame. In Part 2 We added the pieces in preparation for deploying the product. The Gotchas are some errors we saw and how to fix them. ... Read more

The simple chat example that DHH built in his recent screencast using ActionCable in Rails 5, is available on GitHub here: https://github.com/HectorPerez/chat-in-rails5. But can we get this working on an Elastic Beanstalk single instance - with no load balancer ? => Initially yes, then no, then yes! On a development pc:Action Cable works with redis so to run the chat app you will need to install redis on your local machine: ... Read more

When you are looking to reduce your AWS costs, you might consider removing the Load balancer. At $20 per month it accounts for a large proportion of the hosting costs for a small application. Is it really needed right now? Down the line when your application grows, you can easily bring it back - right? Elastic beanstalk is handy for provisioning and deployment, and thankfully the load balancer is not compulsory. ... Read more

Switching your Rails site to always use HTTPS takes a bit configuring. Here is how we followed AWS’s 3 high level steps: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ElasticLoadBalancing/latest/DeveloperGuide/ssl-server-cert.html Create a custom domain with your DNS provider. Create and upload an SSL certificate to AWS Identity and Access Management (AWS IAM). Update your Elastic Beanstalk environment to use HTTPS. Step 1) was DONE - We already had our own www.ourdomain.com, not registered on AWS route 53 nor using the AWS route 53 name servers, but with godaddy. ... Read more

Now that Rails 4.2.0 is out and several things have aligned, we took the plunge to upgrade to Ruby 2.1.4 from 1.9.3. We had already upgraded to Rails 4.2.0. Upgrading ruby was fairly straightforward, and we improved the AWS deployment in the process: faster updates & DB no longer tied to EB. Here are the steps we took: The plan was to create a whole new AWS EB environment using the latest 2014. ... Read more