TodayTM

About the project

TodayTM application project is a minimal and simple task management application designed to help you efficiently manage all your daily tasks. The motivation behind this project is to demonstrate how to build and deploy a minimal and simple full-stack cloud-native application using modern and trending technologies such as React, Golang, and Kubernetes/OpenShift.

Setup the project

Running the application using docker compose up

• Clone the repository
• Run docker compose up to start the three services namely db, backend and frontend. The Docker Compose is use to orchestrate the Frontend, Go Backend API and MySQL services.
• The backend API is avaialable at "http://localost:4000" and frontend is at "http://localhost:3000"

Running each services in the application separately

• Stop and remove the docker containers for the services if you ran docker compose up earlier
• Change to the project directory "/taskmanager/backend" and run docker compose up to start the MySQL server

cd /taskmanager/backend
docker compose up

• Open another terminal, and change to the backend directory "/taskmanager/backend"
• Run go get to fetch and install backend dependencies
• Run go run . to start the Go backend API server on locahost port 4000
• Open another terminal, and change to "/taskmanager/frontend"
• Run yarn && yarn dev to launch the React frontend application on locahost port 3000.

The TodayTM application featues and some screenshots

List Tasks

The list tasks page is the main dashboard of the TodayTM application, where users can view and manage their tasks for the day. Users can also sort the task list in ascending or descending order, and the ratio of completed to uncompleted tasks is displayed on the right side. Users can toggle a task list item to display the details view, where they can see detailed information about a specific task, including its title, description, due date, and status, allowing them to prioritize their tasks effectively.

Add Task

The add task page contains a form where users can input details for a new task, including the title, description, due date, and priority. The add form is disabled until the user enters at least a task title, and the default time is used if the time is not selected.

Deploy the TodayTM fullstack application onto the OpenShift Container Platform

Since the motivation behind this project is for demonstration, we will deploy the application onto the OpenShift sandbox, which offers a free tier version for experimentation. See the following link on how to get free tier access to the OpenShift sandbox cluster. After you have log into OpenShift sandbox cluster, then follow the instructions below to deploy the application to the cluster:

• Build the backend and frontend applications using the Dockerfile.prod in each folder, and push to a registry of your choice.
• Update the images in the backend and frontend manifests to match the names of your Docker images.
• Update the <namespace> in the k8-manifests files to match your project namespace.
• Log in to the OpenShift cluster. Get a token from the "Copy login command" in the profile menu on the Masthead toolbar. Copy the login command and execute it in a CLI terminal. Then apply the k8-manifests files that contain all the resources used for the deployment of the application. Alternatively, you can use the Import YAML (+) editor feature also located on the Masthead to upload the k8-manifests files.
• Create the database in the MySQL pod. You can use the Terminal tab on the pod details page to access the MySQL pod. Enter the MySQL username and password. See the syntax below:
  • Create the database in the MySQL pod container.
  • Exec into the MySQL pod container and run the following command:

    mysql -u root -p
    

  • Enter the password value encoded in the mysql-secret resource: password

    CREATE DATABASE taskmanager;
    

  Note, the name of the database should match the name in the "database/secret.yaml".
• Finally, copy the backend exposed route. You can find it on the Route details page under the location field, and update the frontend deployment env variable REACT_APP_BACKEND_URL value to whatever your backend URL is. Then, wait for the update to take place or delete the frontend pod so that it is recreated with the updated env variable. Visit the frontend URL. You should see the running application.

Description of the Golang with Fiber RESTFul API

The project contains three subdirectories, namely backend, frontend, and k8-manifests, with comments added to briefly describe the code in each file. The following highlights the functions of each file:

1. main.go This is the entry point of the application. It initializes the Fiber app, sets up routes, connects to the database, and starts the server.

2. database.go This file contains the logic for connecting to the database. It includes functions to initialize the database connection and handle any database-related configurations.

3. models/task.go This file defines the Task model, which represents the structure of a task in the database. It includes fields for the task's properties and any necessary annotations for the ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) library.

4. handlers/task_handler.go This file contains the handler functions for the task-related routes. These functions handle the HTTP requests and interact with the database to perform CRUD operations.

5. routes/routes.go This file sets up the routes for the application. It maps URL paths to the corresponding handler function in step 4

6. config/config.go The config.go file is responsible for loading configuration settings from environment variables, typically stored in a .env file. This file uses the godotenv package to load environment variables from the .env file into the application's environment, making them accessible via the os.Getenv function.

7. .env The .env file is used to store environment variables for your application. These variables are typically configuration settings that your application needs to run, such as database connection details, API keys, and other sensitive information.