Using Stork to deploy a production Ninja Framework app

Ninja is a full stack web framework for Java. Stork is an "after-build" tool for Java. Lately, I run all webapps in a stand-alone process (embed Jetty/Netty/etc) and use a reverse proxy (Nginx) to send requests to it. While Ninja is easy to package as a war file that's ready to run in Tomcat/Jboss/etc, it's not as easy to package it as a stand-alone app that can run as a daemon/service. Ninja + Stork to the rescue! Stork integrates with Ninja in just 2 easy steps.

A full demo is available @ https://github.com/fizzed/java-ninja-stork-demo

Step 1: Add Stork Maven Plugin

Stork's maven plugin provides two separate goals. The generate goal binds to the compile phase and compiles any files in src/main/launchers to target/stork. The assembly goal binds to the package phase and creates a tarball of everything -- including the launchers, jars, and resources required to start your Ninja app.

Add the following to your pom.xml:

....
<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>com.fizzed</groupId>
      <artifactId>fizzed-stork-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>1.2.2</version>
      <executions>
        <execution>
          <id>generate-stork-launchers</id>
          <goals>
            <goal>generate</goal>
          </goals>
        </execution>
        <execution>
          <id>generate-stork-assembly</id>
          <goals>
            <goal>assembly</goal>
          </goals>
        </execution>
      </executions> 
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</build>
....

Step 2: Create Launcher Config File

Stork's maven plugin compiles any files in src/main/launchers to target/stork during the compile phase. Let's say you have an app named "ninja-stork-demo". Create a src/main/launchers directory and add a file named ninja-stork-demo.yml with the following content:

name: "ninja-stork-demo"
domain: "com.fizzed"
display_name: "ninja-stork-demo"
short_description: "Ninja Stork Demo Webapp"
type: DAEMON
main_class: "ninja.standalone.NinjaJetty"
platforms: [ WINDOWS, LINUX, MAC_OSX ]

Compile, Package, Run, Deploy

To verify your launcher config will compile run the following in your terminal:

mvn compile

To assemble your storkified tarball run the following in your terminal:

mvn package

Once maven finishes then target/stork will contain a fully prepared directory with start/stop/run scripts that are ready to run across any platform. Here is what your target/stork directory will look like:

target/stork/bin
target/stork/bin/ninja-stork-demo64.exe
target/stork/bin/ninja-stork-demo32.ini
target/stork/bin/ninja-stork-demo32.exe
target/stork/bin/ninja-stork-demo.bat
target/stork/bin/ninja-stork-demo64.ini
target/stork/bin/ninja-stork-demo
target/stork/lib
target/stork/lib/(all jars from project including project artifact jar)
target/stork/share
target/stork/share/init.d
target/stork/share/init.d/ninja-stork-demo.init
target/stork/share/osx
target/stork/share/osx/com.fizzed.ninja-stork-demo.plist

To quickly try out your Ninja app on Linux/OSX/UNIX (no need to change dirs):

target/stork/bin/ninja-stork-demo --run

To quickly try out your Ninja app on Windows (no need to change dirs):

target/stork/bin/ninja-stork-demo.bat --run

The target/ directory will also contain a ninja-stork-demo-1.0.0.tar.gz tarball ready to copy to another server. The tarball contains all the necessary scripts to run as a rock-solid, reliable daemon across Windows, Linux, Mac OSX, and many other UNIX platforms.

Since the tarball uses a canonical layout for a Java app, you may also find the stork-fabric-deploy script useful in doing a super efficient deploy to staging/production servers. For more info, you'll want to check out the example app or the Stork Github repository.