I am using Firebase for a long time (since 2018) and loving it. In that time there was not Location southamerica-east1 (São Paulo). Now I would like to store the project (web app, cloud function, and database) in southamerica to reduce cost and make it near to my end-users (also based in Brazil).
I have source control, all environment parameters values stored in Custom Environment Variables. The application works fine when no data is found. No concerns with backup data. No problem about downtime. This is not a critical app.
Anyway, I can't delete the application because I already have some users logged in there and IoT devices sending data through PubSub.
How can I rebuild my Firebase/Firestore/Web application/Function from the ground up, and make sure the new location is southamerica? If possible, I need to keep user and passwords, and web
Looking forward, (I don't think moving the bucked location would be the best solution here) but based on this page Select locations for your project I can't update the location, but since it is based on bucked location, if it doesn't break the project, I will use Google Cloud Transfer Page to Moving and renaming buckets
May is it a better solution than rebuild the app (Firebase/Firestore/Web application/Function)?
May I break my Firestore database or cloud function or web app?
May I lost my project domain or any other related URL parameter like authDomain, databaseURL, storageBucket?
May I need to update some web app parameter after the change?
They cannot be moved at present and migrating data is a manual process. Difficulty varies by product.
General guidance
Do not delete the old project before fully migrated.
Hosting
This migration is nearly trivial, with the understanding that there is likely a minor service interruption while moving custom domains.
Deploy to the new site
CNAME your custom domain to the new site (myproject.firebaseapp.com)
Delete custom domain from old site
Add custom domain to new site
Cloud Functions
This migration is trivial.
Create a local directory for your new project
Run firebase init and set up project normally (enable Functions)
Copy your Functions code into the new project's functions/ directory
Deploy to the new project
Database
This migration is tricky, difficult, and highly specific to your use case and tolerance for downtime. What follows is a general template to adapt.
Reference docs for import/export: Firestore import/export, Realtime Database backups
In the old project:
Lock the database using security rules to prevent changes
Export existing database
In the new project:
Import the database backup
You probably need to migrate existing users (see account export/import) as well so user ids stored in your DB will still reference the correct accounts
Point existing apps to the new project
If downtime is not an option, or if you'll be deploying a new mobile app version and need time for changes to propagate, then you'll need to set up a dual write model:
Dual sync: Create a Cloud Function on both the new and old database that duplicate all create/update/delete operations on the respective partner endpoint.
Sync pre-existing data: Perform the export/import process as above on all data created before the dual sync was implemented, excluding the step to lock the old database
Shut down your old mobile app version (once enough accounts have migrated)
Shut down the dual sync Functions and turn down the old site
Based in your information, the main issue is Firestore because other products are globally balanced like Cloud IoT Core and Hosting (these can't be configured on a specific region)
Other products like Functions can be redeployed with the same code and name into another region.
I think that you can create another project only to move the database to the new region and configure all Cloud resources to reach the new located database.
As a caveat, you need to add another domain/subdomain and create new credentials to work with the new project; this step can´t be skipped because it is required for authentication.
On the application side you can add the access to the new database
In case you need assistance during your migration you can start a case with GCP/Firestore support.
This is a hard pill to swallow, but maybe the costs and the time to migrate to another region will be higher than keeping your application as is working today.
Related
My preview works and has data but my deployment has no data. I'm using the (Recommended) DEFAULT CLOUD SQL database configuration.
Note: This is only day 4 with Google App Maker. Finding answers to App Maker-specific questions has been super difficult, but I'm making rapid progress on my application, so overall tired but good. :{)
As written in the documentation,
App Maker deployments can use the same Cloud SQL instance, but have separate databases on that instance. Data that you had in preview mode is not available in other deployments. You have a few options for how to handle this situation:
To use data from the preview instance in your published deployment, export the deployment data from the preview instance and import it to the published deployment.
To share a database across all deployments (preview and published), use a custom Cloud SQL database.
When you deploy your app, AppMaker create a new database in your google cloud SQL instance for the deployment. All the data create in previews is in another database.
To use the same database as the preview mode you have to go in the settings of your app in the tab "DATABASE" and copy the Database Key. Then go to your cloud sql instance in google cloud platforme and on the details of the instance in the overview tab just copy the instance connexion name.
then edit your deployments and select "Use Custom Cloud SQL database" and copy with the format
"instanceConnexionName/DatabaseKey" then save and appmaker should ask you to enter you username and password of your google cloud sql insatnce.
On app settings, database page you should see
Databas key: iTIJQaCj491a4111
(Actually this is the name of the mySQL instance)
In GCP console, go to SQL, click on Instance ID, and on the Instance ID overview page is the instance connection name, e.g., MyProject-123456:us-central1:instancename
Back in app settings
Select Switch to custom database and enter the full connection string
projectname:instancename/schema as
MyProject-123456:us-central1:instancename/iTIJQaCj491a4111
Provide username and password
and follow the steps to confirm existing database
Turns out the issue is when you publish it doesn't push the data, you have to manually re-upload the data into the live version. This is actually a good thing, but I wish it'd been explicitly documented. I found it, after figuring it out on my own, in some early release notes from a few years back. I guess I wasn't the only one this stupid.
I'm relatively new to Firebase and want to work on one Firebase Project from multiple Machines. When setting up a new Project locally via firebase CLI and attaching it to an existing Project in the cloud, there's a full project folder created in my local directory.
Is there any chance of sort of "downloading"/updating an existing project to a second machine?
The workaround I'd have chosen would be to manually copy the whole directory to the new environment and then login firebase.
But this would, given the fact of missing source control, bring the risk of overwriting changes made on machine 1 yesterday, when firebase deploy from machine 2 today, wouldn't it?
Sorry for maybe not expressing myself in a decent it-guy way, but I'm far from being a full-blooded programmer.
Thanks!
You have to manage your source code yourself, typically using a source control mechanism such as git or svn. Firebase does not provide a source control system for the code and configuration that you deploy to Cloud Functions.
I'm working with Azure's offline-sync API.
(It's REALLY GREAT so far, but since it's still new-ish it doesn't have comprehensive documentation, only tutorials. We need to craft dependable integration tests, and we're finding that tricky because we need to rely on published behavior in official docs for that... or dig into the source, but that is liable to change at any time.)
The samples do this:
var store = new MobileServiceSQLiteStore("localstore.db");
The comments mention "initializes local store".
I assume the local sync database is a "throw-away" asset, as it can be recreated at will.
Is the expected behavior that it will create the local SQLite file if it does not exist, or it will recreate the file each time the mobile app starts and that call is made?
The tutorials are augmented by the HOWTO documentation (available under Mobile > Develop - in the same area as the tutorials) and the GitHub Wiki and the github.io pages for the SDK.
The local store is created if it doesn't exist, and new fields are added to tables if they are needed. It's sometimes good to delete the database - for example, if you reduce the field count in your mobile app (the process only adds fields). If you do this, the database will be re-created when the app is next restarted.
I am about to embark on the development of a line of business application using the Universal Windows Platform (Windows 10). One of the requirements of the application is the synchronisation of data from a server to a local SQLite database; this is required because the application needs to be usable where there is no network connectivity.
It is likely that multiple (windows domain) users will be accessing the application on the same device, sometimes simply by "swapping users", other times by logging off the first user and logging on as a new user.
I realise that UWP applications are installed at a user level, however I would like to be able to share the SQLite database between these users instead of forcing each user to download their own copy of the data.
Is this possible? I am struggling to find any reference to this kind of sharing within the Microsoft documentation - but of course that documentation is new and far from complete!
I guess at the end of the day I am looking for access to a folder that is accessible by any user running that application on the same device, such as the "x:\Users\Public" folders that are available from the desktop, but without having to ask the user to provide access to that folder via any picker control - instead simply being able to "open" it.
Thanks.
In case anyone runs across this, this functionality is now available as described in this blog post:
We introduced a new storage location Windows 10, ApplicationData.SharedLocalFolder, that allows multiple users of one app to share local data. Obviously this feature is only interesting with devices that will be used by more than one person. For such scenarios, for example in educational uses, it may make sense to place any large downloads in Shared Local. The benefits will be two-fold: any user can access these files without the need to re-download them, also there will be storage space savings
Keep in mind that Shared Local is only available if the machine has the right group policy, otherwise when you call ApplicationData.Current.SharedLocalFolder you will get back a null result.
In order to enable Shared Local the machine administrator should enable the corresponding policy.
Alternatively, the administrator could create a REG_DWORD value called AllowSharedLocalAppData with a value of 1 under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModel\StateManager
Note that data store in ShareLocal will only be persisted as long as the app is installed on the device and won’t be backed up by the system.
In Solution Explorer , Right click on Package.appxmanifest then click on ViewCode , end of this file in both projects add below code :
<Extensions>
<Extension Category="windows.publisherCacheFolders">
<PublisherCacheFolders>
<Folder Name="FolderName" />
</PublisherCacheFolders>
</Extension>
</Extensions>
After that in code you can access this folder with below line of code :
StorageFolder sharedDownloadsFolder = ApplicationData.Current.GetPublisherCacheFolder("FolderName");
It`s so important that the folder you will share between two these Apps depend on same publisher info at Certificate File [ProjectName]_TemporaryKey.pfx , if this Certificate File and publisher Info of app is same in both Projects , then you can access the same SharedFolder in both application and use it for create or use dataBase file(like SQLite Database file) or other files that need to be share in both applications.
I am working on a ASP.net MVC4 project where a same project needs to be deployed to many clients on daily basis, each client will have its own domain / sub domain and a separate app pool and db (MSSSQL).
Doing each deployment manually could take at least 1-2 hours if everything goes well. Is there anyway using which I can do this in some automated way?
Moreover, we also need to update all of the apps when a new version is released.. may be one by one or all of them at same time. However, doing this manually could take weeks and once we have more clients then it will not possible doing this update manually.
The update involves, suspending app for some time, taking a full backup of files and db, update application code/ files in app folder, upgrade db with a script and then start app, doing some diagnosis script to check if update was successful or not, if not we need to check what went wrong?
How can we automate this updates? Any idea would be great on how to approach this issue.
As a developer for BuildMaster, I can say that this scenario, known as the "Core Version" pattern, is a common one. If you're OK with a paid solution, you can setup your deployment plans within the tool that do exactly what you described.
As a more concrete example, we experience this exact situation in a slightly different way. BuildMaster has a set of 60+ extensions that rely on a specific SDK version. In our recent 4.0 release, we had to re-deploy every extension because of breaking API changes within the SDK. This is essentially equivalent to having a bunch of customers and deploying to them all at once. We have set up our deployment plans such that any time we create a new release of the SDK application, we have the option to set a variable that says to build every extension that relies on the SDK:
In BuildMaster, the idea is to promote a build (i.e. an immutable object that travels through various environments like Dev, Test, Staging, Prod) to its final environment (where it becomes the deployed build for the release). In your case, this would be pushing your MVC application to its final environment, and that would then trigger the deployments of all dependent applications (i.e. your customers' instances of your application). For our SDK, the plan looks like this:
For your scenario, you would only need the single action, "Promote Build". As I mentioned before, any dependents would then be promoted to their final environments, so all your customer deployments would kick off once that action is run during deployment. As an example, our Azure extension's deployment plan for its final environment looks like this (internal URLs redacted):
You may have noticed that these plans are marked "Shared", which means every extension we have has the exact same deployment plan, but utilizes different variables to handle the minor differences like names, paths, etc.
Since this is such an enormous topic I could go on for ages, but I think that should be sufficient for your use-case if you wanted to try it out.
There are others but you could setup Team Server Foundation to deploy automated builds.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff650529.aspx
I find the easiest way to do this from an MVC project is to create a publish profile.
This is done by right-clicking your project selecting publish and then configuring it to your needs.
Then from TFS you create a new build definition, this kicks of a wizard which takes you through it.
There are quite a few options which would be too long to go into for every scenario.
The main change I usually find the most important is to set an MSBuild Argument to deploy with the publish profile.
This can be found at Process > Advanced > MSBuild Arguments.
Once this is configured correctly it's a simple case of right-clicking and queue new build to build and deploy.
You wil need different PublishProfile/Build configuration per deployment environment.
For backups I use a powershell script which can be called manually or from TFS.
You also have a drop folder in TFS which keeps a backup of x many releases.
The datbases are automatically configured via Sql server to backup, TBH I didn't set that up it was a DB admin guy who is also involved with releases.
From a dev testing side I use jMeter (http://jmeter.apache.org/) to run some automated scripts that check that users can login and view certain screens, just to confirm nothing major has gone wrong. However there is usually a testing team to run more detailed tests, again not setup by me.
All of the above will probably take you sometime to setup but in the long run it will literally save you weeks of time over a year.
A free alternative to TFS is http://www.cruisecontrolnet.org/, I have used this in the past too and is pretty good.
You can automate your .Net deployments with Beanstalk, which will give you a way to trigger deployments with a single click, watch progress, manage permissions and see history of deployments. Check out this guide on the topic:
http://guides.beanstalkapp.com/deployments/deploy-dotnet.html
I hope you will find it useful.
P.S. - I work at Beanstalk.