ringMon

A Ring middleware that injects single monitoring web page into a Clojure web application based on Ring library or on higher level web frameworks such as Noir or Compojure. It is also easily added as a dev dependency to any Clojure application as well. Actually, it could be incorporated into any JVM (non-Clojure) application with bit more work - planned for later.

The page displays raw JMX data of interest in a tree like structure. It also shows derived values such as CPU load that is calculated by sampling JMX property OperatingSystem.ProcessCpuTime every 2 seconds and statistics for AJAX requests to the middlware itsef. There is also a button to force JVM garbage collection.

Moreover, the page provides full featured nREPL front end with syntax colored editor, command history and persistent sessions.

Note that for real life application there should be some mechanism to prevent unathorised access. There is a pluggable authenication function that will be called upon every AJAX command or ringMon page request. The function is passed the pending Ring request map, in order to decide whether to accept it or reject it. Simple authentication mechanism would be to have white list of IP addresses allowed.

ringMon can be very useful to provide nREPL access to applications deployed to cloud platforms such as Heroku. Heroku has restriction of one server socket per web app, so the convenient way to share nREPL communication with normal web server traffic was to implement ringMon as a Ring middleware.

The communication path for request from browser to nREPL server is:

browser(js)->AJAX->ringMon(clj)->Custom-intra-JVM-trasport(clj)->nREPLserver(clj)

The reply travels all the way back in reverse order. The nREPL provides pluggable transport architecture. This particular one is based on pair of LinkedBlockingQueues in back to back configuration - very fast and no need for using bencode since the commands and responses are sent as native Clojure data structures.

Demo

You can see ringMon in action in this showcase Noir application deployed at Heroku.

Chat facility

ringMon monitoring page supports a simple chat facility. This may assist remote team members when they work together on the same deployed application instance. Or it can be just a fun tool to provide bit of social REPL-ing, such as noirMon does.

Usage (for local test)

lein deps
lein run

Point your browser to localhost:8888.

Using ringMon in your applications

If you want to include ringMon in your leiningen project, simply add this to your dependencies:

 [ringmon "0.1.2"]

ringMon project.clj is compatible with Leiningen v2.0 as well.

To track the latest snapshot (recommended) use:

 [ringmon "0.1.3-SNAPSHOT"]

Bare bones

In case of bare bones Ring application, the following is needed:

(ns my.server
  (:require
      [ringmon.monitor          :as monitor]
      [ring.adapter.jetty       :as jetty]))

(defn demo [req]
  (let [headers  (:headers req)
        hostname (get headers "host")
        uri      (:uri req)]
    (if (or (= uri "/") (= uri "/favicon.ico"))
      {:status 200
       :headers {"Content-Type" "text/html"}
       :body "Hello"})))

(def handler
  (-> demo
      ; <-- add your additional middleware here
      (monitor/wrap-ring-monitor)))

(defn -main []
  (let [port (Integer. (get (System/getenv) "PORT" "8080"))]

    (println "The ringMon bare bones local demo starting...")
    (jetty/run-jetty handler {:port port})))

Point your browser to localhost:8080 amd you will see Hello response. The monitoring page is at localhost:8080/ringmon/monview.html.

Noir

If you are using Noir, then you need to slightly modify startup in your server.clj:

(ns myapp.server
  (:require [noir.server     :as server]
            [ringmon.monitor :as monitor])) ; 1. ringmon.monitor is required

(server/load-views "src/myapp/views/")

(defn -main [& m]
  (let [mode (keyword (or (first m) :dev))
        port (Integer. (get (System/getenv) "PORT" "8080"))]

    ; 2. add ringmon middlevare _before_ starting the server
    (server/add-middleware monitor/wrap-ring-monitor)

    (server/start port {:mode mode
                        :ns 'myapp})))

Again, the monitoring page is at localhost:8080/ringmon/monview.html. You might want to add more covenient link to this page in your appllication like it was done in noirMon.

As a replacement for lein repl

Even if your Clojure application is not web based, you can add [ringmon "0.1.2"] and [ring/ring-jetty-adapter "1.0.1"] to dev dependencies and use it as a replacement for built in REPL.

In this case ringMon runs first:

lein run -m ringmon.server :local-repl true :port 0

This will start a separate Jetty instance on autoselected server port just to serve the nREPL page. Your default browser will automatically open freh window and load the monitoring page. If :port has non-zero value then there will be no port autoselection. Default value is 8888.

You can run above command on a remote headless server as well - the browser start attempt should fail gracefuly. In this case you will want to specify a port that is visible to browser on your desktop. Automatic browser window activation is disabled by omitting :local-repl key or by setting it to false or nil.

At this point your application is not runnning yet. You can start it by entering this in nREPL input window:

(use 'your.app.main.namespace)
(-main)

There is an easier way to add web based nREPL capability to your project if you have Leiningen v 2.0 installed, by installing lein-webrepl plugin and simply entering:

lein2 webrepl

in your project folder. No changes are required to project.clj. Note that lein 1.x and 2.0 can be installed side by side. See lein-webrepl GitHub page for more info.

Run-time configuration

The map bellow shows the default runtime configuration. It is typically adjusted before web server starts, but it may be changed later as well.

; the middleware configuration
(def the-cfg (atom
  {
   :local-repl   nil    ; set to true if browser is to autostart assuming
                        ; running locally (optional).
   :http-server  nil    ; Ring compatible http server start function that
                        ; needs ring-handler and {:port port} as parameters
                        ; If it is not set, the Jetty one will be attempted
                        ; to be resolved dynamically
   :ring-handler nil    ; Ring compatible handler
   :port         nil    ; http-server port
   ; If ringMon is to use an http server other than Jetty
   ; then :http-server key value needs to be set prior to calling
   ; the ringmon.server/start
   ;---------------------------------------------------------------------
   ; Browser parameters
   :fast-poll  500      ; browser poll when there is a REPL output activity
   :norm-poll  2000     ; normal browser poll time
   :parent-url ""       ; complete url of the parent application main page (optional)
   :lein-webrepl nil    ; set if runing in standalone mode in context of the
                        ; lein-webrepl plugin. May be used to customize the
                        ; browser behaviour. Also used by nREPL server side
                        ; to merge :main and :repl-init key values from project.clj
   ;-----------------------------------------------------------------------
   ; access control
   :disabled   nil      ; general disable, if true then check :the auth-fn
   :auth-fn    nil}))   ; authorisation callback, checked only if :disabled is true
                        ; will be passed a Ring request, return true if Ok

Use ringmon.monitor/merge-cfg to change the configuration safely.

(defn merge-cfg
  [cfg]
  (when (map? cfg)
    (swap! the-cfg merge cfg)))

License

Copyright (C) 2012 Zoran Tomicic

Distributed under the Eclipse Public License, the same as Clojure.