I'm building a desktop client app (win/linux/mac) with a backend hosted in GCP (I'm considering other cloud platforms too). The desktop app should be minimalistic and provide access to local machine resources to the backend. And I'm looking for a way to invoke my app from the server (when some event occurs) and then the app would do some work on a local machine. Here's what I've tried so far.
Google Cloud Pub/Sub. Seems like it does what I need, but to make it work I have to create a service account, generate JSON key and store it locally, which is not good. I can restrict the service account access permissions, of course, but still it doesn't look good to me. Maybe there are other ways to auth my app running at the end user machine? I want to keep my desktop app minimal (ideally without UI, just an "agent" console process / Windows service). Maybe I could consider a login screen to connect the app with the backend, if that solves the problem, but I don't want to overcomplicate.
Google Cloud Run + SignalR / WebSockets. This solution also looks good, but it has one significant disadvantage. As long as there's at least one open WebSocket the Cloud Run instance is considered active and therefore billed. There are other difficulties related to scalability and container instances synchronization too.
What do you think about the options above, and what are the other possibilities? Am I left with REST API and polling for updates? I'm quite new to the cloud stuff so any help is appreciated. Thanks!
If you want to be able to invoke your local app from Google Cloud, you need 2 things
The first one, to register your app on Google Cloud, with, preferably, a auth mecanism (can be an API key for example). Like this, the GCP backend know where to call you app (which IP/port) and how (the auth mechanism)
The second is to have your app up and running and listen external communication. HTTP is the easiest way. Wait a HTTP call on the IP/port defined during the registration, check the auth and perform the process.
You can store the data (location and the auth) in firestore for example, and use Cloud Run to perform the HTTP call.
You can also inverse the solution and to poll (long polling or regular poll) the backend from the local app when it is running.
The 2 approach are possible, the second one slightly easier but can be challenging to manage the security.
Related
i had created a small app using nextjs and had deployed it on google cloud run. I was thinking of adding in a chat feature and could not figure out the best way to approach it. All i know is i dont want to use another 3rd party software but just do it with websockets / socket.io.
nextjs says that i can just create the socket server under the /api folder but with cloud run im assuming that might cause issues when there are multiple instances running and ill have to worry about synchronizing the data with like a redis database https://cloud.google.com/run/docs/triggering/websockets#multiple-instances. its just this gets super expensive.
I was thinking what if i just created a new websocket/socket.io server and deployed it on a cheap compute engine as if i understand correct that is just going to be one VM and always up right? and then the nextjs app can just keep running on cloud run and then connect to the compute engine websocket server when they navigate to the chat app. I was then even thinking to move all my database logic over to this application which is hosted on compute engine so the nextjs app can just ask the new server for all the data when it needs to populate the data.
Is there any other better solution or is there issues with this approach im not thinking of? i dont get much traffic so i dont need any crazy strong VM that will cost be a lot hence i was thinking of going this route and this might help me seperate the UI and the backend server. mainly liked nextjs for the SSR content as my FAQ pages and all are SEO friendly over all the additional over head i would have had to do with a react app.
I recently visited "AWS Free Tier". Under that in "serverless" option is "AWS Lambda". I am trying to develop an application. I want to know what will be the best resource to use.
USAGE: I need to connect to server through mobile app using HTTP POST. 1st it will register the bus number. Then it will add the corresponding bus stops and the fare between each bus stop. The app will next time send bus number and get all bus stops. Then it will select 2 bus stops and send to server. It will pay the required fare. Server will generate the bus ticket and store in database. It will send 1 copy to the mobile.
I need an web server for development and testing purpose. I had started with JSP. But due to some reasons I was not able to access the JSP page through android app. However I was able to access the JSP through browser. In android app, I can access other websites. I think the url was the problem. So, I decided to use AWS server. Please let me know where I can use JSP. If you have any other server and database, please let me know. Currently I will be using it for development and testing purpose. So, 1-5 users may use it. But later I will run it as a business. Then more users will be using it. (So, please let me know about the payments for business use also, if you have idea about that) I will need database also.
You could write a service which recieves an HTTP request and accesses a database as part of the logic it performs to generate a response and host that service with AWS Lambda.
You would need a database in addition to AWS Lambda (there are many database services available from AWS and other providers).
You can't just drop your JSP files onto Lambda. It does not support JSP (although it does support programs written in Java).
I am planning to use Firebase database and want to know how it fits in to the following scenario.
lets say I have a browser app, android app / iOS which uses Web Services to get / insert data, web services talks to the Data Base and returns data to the client.
This way I have to write code once in my web services and all the clients use that to retrieve and insert data to the database.
If I want to use Firebase, will I be following the same approach of having webservices between the client's and the Firebase DB.
I have done some sample Firebase examples where it it gets data from database directly without web services and in this approach we have to write our logic on each client (Web browser/ android app/ iOs app).
I have looked into this article
https://firebase.googleblog.com/2013/03/where-does-firebase-fit-in-your-app.html?showComment=1480073224245#c464815735109872173
The Pattern 2 has the server concept but that does not look appropriate in my scenario.
Can I have my web service and Firebase database and get data Synchronization capabilities.
Correct me if I am wrong and please suggest the approach I need to take.
Thank you for your valuable suggestions in advance.
Thanks & regards,
Rao Burugula
The article you link gives you the most common options for integrating Firebase into your app. Pattern 2 is the easiest way to use the Firebase Database and run your own server-side code:
In this model the Firebase Database sits between the app on the user's device and your back-end code. By using this model, you can still get all the benefits of the realtime synchronization, security rules and scalability, but also have back-end code that runs in a trusted environment.
Of course you can also go for a more traditional three-tier model, where your app server sites between the devices and the database. But in that case the Firebase database won't have direct interaction with your app anymore, so you'll have to take care of the realtime aspects of the synchronization (if you want those) in your own code.
I also recommend reading the Google Cloud documentation on using the Firebase Database and App Engine's Flexible Environments. The architecture described there is the same, but a bit more up-to-date:
I am working on a WP 8 app which I would like to connect to an on-premise(local) web service. I have managed to do so using simple BasicHttpBinding without secuirty and Azure Service Bus Relay, but i cant manage to make a secure connection. WP 8 only support BasicHttpBinding, and thats my biggest problem so far.
I understand that Azure mobile service is an efficent and easy way to securly connect your WP 8 app to the cloud. Is it possible to access an on-premise web service through Azure mobile service? And if possible, could it be done without exposing all the content of the local service publically via Azure Service bus relay?
You should be able to do this securely from WP8 -- I'm not quite sure why it's not working -- but even if you had to roll something yourself, it should be possible (example, check out this post from Michael Collier on doing something similar: http://michaelcollier.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/azure-sb-and-wp7/)
To the question, though, WAMS (Windows Azure Mobile Services) is definitely easy to use, but it wouldn't be feasible to do what you want -- that is, to be a public endpoint in this fashion. In short, WAMS gives you an easy to use CRUD interface to data that happens to also expose features for authentication and notifications, and at the same time gives you some server-side javascript to do custom work -- such as calling out to other services, sending emails or notifications, etc.
But, each request into WAMS is essentially mapped to a CRUD operation on a database table. While you could likely 'inject' a simple call, this isn't what you want. It sounds like using the service bus is the right way to do this and should be possible...
Simple problem, actually. I am trying to evaluate the possibilities of Google Apps, using Python as development language. It seems practical to create a web application or web site with it, but how about creating web services?
I am not too interested in solutions to create a SOAP or REST service in Python for Google Apps, since a simple Google search should provide plenty of solutions. I am more interested in experiences and ease of use.
But the real question is: When comparing a web service in Google Apps with web services in the Microsoft Azure environment, which would provide the better performance? The best user experience? I don't care for the actual development languages but need a good comparison of pro's and cons of web services in both the Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure.
Somehow, Azure seems better suited for services while Google seems better for sites. A tough choice...
Would be very interesting to see if both could be combined into a single solution. :-)
Btw, choosing which engine to use also means choosing the proper development environment and programming language. While I'm proficient in .NET and Python and many other languages, the choice for the service engine determines my focus for future projects.
When building services in Windows Azure, they'd simply be processes running in your VM (Windows Server 2008 SP2 or R2 SP1). You can host services easily in any of the three role types:
Web Role (essentially Windows Server with IIS running) - just add a WCF endpoint to IIS or self-host from your own process).
Worker role (Windows Server with IIS not running) - self-host from your own process
VM role (your own Windows 2008 Server VM pushed to Windows Azure) - Host with whatever mechanism you install / set up.
Each VM in Windows Azure may expose a total of 5 endpoints. These can be a combination of input (external facing) and internal endpoint, each port supporting tcp, http, or https. You define endpoints in your vm role's properties.
Internal endpoints are only usable by other VMs in your deployment. You can't see them / access them from anywhere else, including other Windows Azure deployments. Input endpoints are accessible by the outside world.
If you want an app running in Google to access your Windows Azure service, simply connect to the endpoint via ip+port. The one thing you'll want to be aware of is bandwidth usage. Because your Google-hosted app will be in one data center and your Windows Azure service in another, you'll pay ingress / egress for data going in and out of your Windows Azure service (and I'm guessing there's an associated bandwidth charge on the Google side, but I'm not sure).
It's actually pretty simple to set up a service. For .NET-based examples, look at the labs in the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit (this also other good examples, such as setting up your first Windows Azure application). For a python service host, you'll need to execute python.exe from your VM role's OnStart() event handler, passing in your script name (and optionally port number to listen on). For a simple example of launching python.exe, look at Steve Marx's blog post here.
EDIT: If you're looking to host multiple services (e.g. multiple ports), you can choose to host them in a single VM role or in separate roles, to optimize for cost (with the known limit of 5 endpoints) or performance (scale each service independently).