Try Weik.io on your machine

Every part of the platform runs inside the Try Weik.io dev container: the hub’s message server, the log, metric and trace stores, the backend with the admin UI, the API gateway and an agent called dev with its own message server. You type weikio commands in its terminal, and the integrations you create are files in your editor.

What you need#

• Docker: Docker Engine on Linux, or Docker Desktop on Windows or macOS. Give Docker 8 GB of memory (6 GB at least), 4 CPUs and 20 GB of free disk.
• Visual Studio Code with the Dev Containers extension, or the devcontainer command line (npm install -g @devcontainers/cli).
• Internet access for the first build. It downloads the platform’s images from Docker Hub, and the first build of an integration fetches Camel’s libraries from Maven Central. Later runs use the copies kept in the container.

The platform’s images are built for Intel and AMD processors. On a Mac with Apple silicon, Docker runs them emulated, which is slower.

Open the container#

Get the folder from the Try Weik.io repository and open it in Visual Studio Code, then run Dev Containers: Reopen in Container. The first time, the image is built, which takes a few minutes. The platform then sets itself up in less than a minute.

From the command line, start it and open a shell in it:

$ devcontainer up --workspace-folder .
$ devcontainer exec --workspace-folder . bash

The command line forwards no port. Before you open the admin UI, run this on your machine in the same folder and leave it running:

$ node .devcontainer/forward-admin-ui.js

When the platform is ready, the terminal shows the weikio CLI’s robot head and prints the admin UI’s address, http://localhost:8580. The CLI is already signed in as the platform administrator, in project sandbox and environment devtest.

What runs in it#

Every process listens on the container’s own loopback address, on plain HTTP. Your editor forwards port 8580 to your machine, and when you start the container from the command line, forward-admin-ui.js does it.

The first commands#

Create an integration in the folder you opened:

$ weikio init hello

Created hello/
  hello.camel.yaml        timer -> log, runs every 5 s
  application.properties  message=hello from weikio
  integration.yaml        name hello, other fields as commented examples

Next, to run it in project sandbox and environment devtest:
  weikio run ./hello

hello.camel.yaml is a route that a timer starts every five seconds and that logs the message from application.properties. Publish it, deploy it to devtest and follow its log lines with this command:

$ weikio run ./hello

Target: http://localhost:8580, project sandbox (context), environment devtest (context)
Uploading 3/3 files, building...
integration sandbox/hello created (version 0.1.0, built in 16.2 s)
deployment devtest/sandbox/hello created (follows latest)
Following the log lines of sandbox/hello. Ctrl-C stops following, and the integration keeps running.
09:14:06.095 UTC INFO  dev  Apache Camel (Main) 4.22.1 is starting
...
09:14:06.439 UTC INFO  dev      Started hello (timer://tick)
09:14:07.113 UTC INFO  hello  dev  Exchange[ExchangePattern: InOnly, BodyType: String, Body: hello from weikio]
09:14:12.114 UTC INFO  hello  dev  Exchange[ExchangePattern: InOnly, BodyType: String, Body: hello from weikio]

Most of the first build’s 16 seconds go to resolving Camel’s libraries. Ctrl-C stops following the log, and the integration keeps running. weikio status shows where it runs, weikio logs shows what it logged, and weikio dev run runs the folder in the container with Camel and devtest’s values:

$ weikio status sandbox/hello
$ weikio logs sandbox/hello
$ weikio dev run hello

Edit hello/hello.camel.yaml and run weikio run ./hello again. The CLI publishes the change as version 0.1.1 and the deployment moves to it.

The admin UI#

Open http://localhost:8580 in Chrome, Edge or Firefox. The administrator account is admin@local, and it has no password until you choose one:

1. In the container’s terminal, run weikio-dev ui-link, which prints a one-time link.
2. Open the link in your browser and choose a password, which signs you in. Later you sign in with admin@local and that password.

/integrations/sandbox/hello

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The container turns off the two-factor sign-in that an installation requires of its platform administrators by default, so you need no authenticator app here. The admin UI and weikio problems show a warning about it, and weikio settings set --two-factor-required=true turns it on again.

The platform’s own address is http://localhost:8580, so the port must be 8580 on your machine as well. If something else uses 8580, VS Code forwards the next free port without a warning, and its Ports view shows which. Stop what uses 8580 and reopen the container. Safari may refuse the sign-in on http://localhost.

When something is wrong#

The weikio-dev command looks after the platform inside the container:

$ weikio-dev status    # every process of the platform: up or down, restarts, health check
$ weikio-dev logs      # the list of logs, and weikio-dev logs backend -f follows one
$ weikio-dev wait      # follows the platform's start until it is ready
$ weikio-dev reset     # removes the installation and sets up a new one

The installation is kept in a Docker volume, so it survives a restart and a rebuild of the container. weikio-dev reset starts from nothing, and every integration you created is lost.

The container is for trying Weik.io on your own machine. Everything runs on plain HTTP, environment devtest has no gateway hostnames inside it, and the platform administrator’s API key is kept in the container’s data volume. To run integrations for others, install Weik.io on one server.