- A Heroku for Scrapers
- All code and collaboration through GitHub
- Write your scrapers in Ruby, Python, PHP or Perl
- Simple API to grab data
- Schedule scrapers or run manually
- Process isolation via Docker
- Trivial to move scraper code and data from ScraperWiki Classic
- Email alerts for broken scrapers
Ruby 2.0.0, Docker, MySQL, SQLite 3, Redis, mitmproxy.
On OS X for development also Vagrant & VirtualBox to host a VM with Docker - see below for more.
On Linux your user account should be able to manipulate Docker (just add your user to the docker group).
Running this on OSX? Read the OSX instructions below BEFORE doing any of this.
bundle install
cp config/database.yml.example config/database.yml
cp env-example .env
Edit config/database.yml with your database settings
Create an application on GitHub so that Morph can talk to GitHub. Fill in the following values
- Application name: Morph (dev)
- Homepage URL: http://127.0.0.1:3000
- Authorization callback URL: http://127.0.0.1:3000/users/auth/github/callback
- Application description: You can leave this blank
Note the use of 127.0.0.1 rather than localhost. Use this or it won't work.
Edit .env with the details of the application you've just created
Now you'll need to build the Docker container that scrapers run in.
bundle exec dotenv rake app:update_docker_image
Now you can start the server
bundle exec dotenv rake db:setup
bundle exec dotenv foreman start
and point your browser at http://127.0.0.1:3000
To get started, log in with Github. There is a simple admin interface accessible at http://127.0.0.1:3000. To access this, run the following to give your account admin rights:
bundle exec rake app:promote_to_admin
If you're doing your development on Linux you're in luck because installing Docker is pretty straightforward. Just follow the instructions on the Docker site.
If you're on OSX you could follow the instructions on the Docker site as well. However there will be some extra configuration you will need to do to make it work with Morph.
We've made it easier by providing a Vagrantfile that sets up a VM, installs docker on it and makes sure that your development box can talk to docker on the VM.
First install Vagrant and VirtualBox. Then,
vagrant up dev
When the Vagrant vm is built, make sure you run vagrant halt dev and then vagrant up dev again to make sure the shared folders are correctly set up. Then you can continue with the installation steps above.
Just recently the Docker folks have released a version of the docker client that works on OS X. The first build is available to download. You might find this helpful later but isn't essential.
We use Guard and Livereload so that whenever you edit a view in development the web page gets automatically reloaded. It's a massive time saver when you're doing design or lots of work in the view. To make it work run
bundle exec guard
By default in development mails are sent to Mailcatcher. To install
gem install mailcatcher
This section will not be relevant to most people. It will however be relevant if you're deploying to a production server.
We're using git-encrypt to encrypt certain files, like the private key for the SSL certificate. To make this work you have to do some special things before you clone the morph repository.
Install Vagrant and Ansible and run vagrant up local. This will build and provision a box that looks and acts like production at dev.morph.io (which you'll need to add to your /etc/hosts file).
Note: if Ansible fails installing nginx for the first time log on to the box (vagrant ssh local), remove nginx (sudo aptitude remove nginx), and rerun provisioning (vagrant provision local).
To access that box you need to forward HTTP and HTTPS privileged ports.
OS X: There's a script to do this via the firewall ./local_port_forward_os_x.sh.
Linux: On Linux the quickest way is to install the redir utility (sudo aptitude install redir) and then run these commands in separate terminals:
sudo redir --lport 80 --cport 8000
sudo redir --lport 443 --cport 8001
Now visit https://dev.morph.io/
To deploy Morph to production, normally you'll just want to deploy using Capistrano:
cap production deploy
When you've changed the Ansible playbooks to modify the infrastructure you'll want to run:
ansible-playbook --user=root --inventory-file=provisioning/hosts provisioning/playbook.yml
And only if you're creating a new production instance, the first time you'll want to provision a new machine on Digital Ocean with:
vagrant up production2
If you're running guard (see above) the tests will also automatically run when you change a file. By default it's setup to use Zeus which speeds things up considerably. You'll need to install this with
gem install zeus
If you find what looks like a bug:
- Check the GitHub issue tracker to see if anyone else has reported issue.
- If you don't see anything, create an issue with information on how to reproduce it.
If you want to contribute an enhancement or a fix:
- Fork the project on GitHub.
- Make your changes with tests.
- Commit the changes without making changes to any files that aren't related to your enhancement or fix.
- Send a pull request.
We maintain a list of issues that are easy fixes. Fixing one of these is a great way to get started while you get familiar with the codebase.
Copyright OpenAustralia Foundation Limited 2013 - 2014. Licensed under the Affero GPL. See LICENSE file for more details.
Matthew Landauer