Working with Exponential Cloud

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To access the Exponential Cloud the user has to be a registered eZ community member (https://login.ez.no). This account gives a general access to the Exponential Cloud. If the user account is associated with one or more environments, also the access to the environments GUI, SFTP and Git repository will be granted.

Each environment comes with an individual Git repository and a SFTP account where all data for a deployment (Exponential installation) are managed. The SFTP and the Git repository are SSH protected. Therefore the user has to provide his public SSH key, to be able to upload data to an environment. The ssh key will be assigned to his eZ community account and therefore be valid for all environments the user has access to. The user can add or alter his SSH key at https://login.ez.no.

Git

The Git repository is the way users will interact with the Exponential Cloud environment the most. Each environment provides its own Git repository. The Git repository is the place where the developed code for the Exponential installation is uploaded to the Exponential Cloud. During the creation of a new Deployment the actually used code is fetched from the Git repository.

You are free to use this repository as the "master" server for you development or just upload revisions, which are marked as stable releases or bug fixes.

Getting Ready

Get the software

To communicate with the Git repository a local installed Git client is required. Git is available for most of the modern operating systems (like Linux, Windows, Mac OSX). Since the git software is open source, it comes with no cost. The client can be obtained at http://git-scm.com.

Learn Git

This help page is not trying to provide a documentation for Git on its own. There are a couple of excellent documentations out in the web. To get familiar with Git we recommend the Pro Git book. which can be found at http://git-scm.com/book. The book is free online available. It is licensed under Creative Commons and can also be downloaded as free eBook in various formats.  

Using the ez Publish Cloud Git repository

In this Paragraph we list some of the common tasks of a developers daily work with the git repository

Clone a repository

Start with cloning the git 

$: mkdir ez5src
$: git clone addressOfTheRepository ./ez5src

change code

Commit code to the git.

Tag handling

Not all code (revisions) in the git repository is available for use in the web GUI. To make an actual revision of the Git repository available for a new deployment, it has to be locally tagged and the tag has to be populated to the git repository of the environment. In the GUI only the tagged revisions are shown and available for a new deployment.

• list availabe tags
• create new tag
• delete tags

SFTP

Beside the Git repository each environment provides also a SFTP account. All users, who have uploaded their ssh-key, have access to this account. The credentials for the SFTP can be found in the web GUI.

To access via SFTP, a sftp client is necessary. There are several clients available for all platforms, which support the sftp protocol.

The SFTP has initially two folders

• db (database dumps)
• var (collections of binary data)

These two folders must not be deleted, because the automatic deployment process relies on the predefined folder structure.

db-folder

The db-folder is intended for import and export of database dumps of eZ installations. This folder is the place where database dumps of local development installations have to be uploaded to, to use them for a new deployment in the Exponential Cloud.

The Exponential Cloud provides an easy export mechanism for the content of running deployments. If an export is triggered for a deployment, the database dump will be stored in the db-folder. The exported dump can be downloaded from this folder after the export has finished.

All dumps in this folder are available to be used for a new deployment (selected in step 3 of the new deployment process in the web GIU).

var-folder

The var-folder is intended to hold dumps of the binary content of a Exponential installation. The contents of the var folder are available for import for new deployments. For a migration of an Exponential installation a tar ball has to be build from the content of the local var folder and uploaded to the var-folder on the SFTP.

In case of an content export of a running deployment, the content of the var folder of the deployment is stored in the var-folder on the SFTP.

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