HireFire 0.5

HireFire
========

This is a Python package for HireFire_ -- The Heroku_ Process Manager:

.. epigraph::

HireFire has the ability to automatically scale your web and worker
dynos up and down when necessary. When new jobs are queued in to your
application's worker queue [..], HireFire will spin up new worker
dynos to process these jobs. When the queue is empty, HireFire will
shut down the worker dynos again so you're not paying for idle
workers.

HireFire also has the ability to scale your web dynos. When your web
application experiences heavy traffic during certain times of the day,
or if you've been featured somewhere, chances are your application's
backlog might grow to a point that your web application will run
dramatically slow, or even worse, it might result in a timeout. In
order to prevent this, HireFire will automatically scale your web
dynos up when traffic increases to ensure that your application runs
fast at all times. When traffic decreases, HireFire will spin down
your web dynos again.

-- from the HireFire_ frontpage

It supports the following Python queuing systems as backends:

* Celery_
* HotQueue_
* Huey_
* Queues_
* RQ_

Feel free to `contribute other backends`_ if you're using a different
queuing system.

.. _HireFire: http://hirefire.io/
.. _Heroku: http://www.heroku.com/
.. _Celery: http://celeryproject.com/
.. _HotQueue: http://richardhenry.github.com/hotqueue/
.. _Huey: https://huey.readthedocs.io/
.. _Queues: http://queues.googlecode.com/
.. _RQ: http://python-rq.org/
.. _`contribute other backends`: https://github.com/jezdez/hirefire/

Installation
------------

Install the HireFire package with your favorite installer, e.g.:

.. code-block:: bash

pip install HireFire

Sign up for `HireFire`_ and set the ``HIREFIRE_TOKEN`` environment variable
with the `Heroku CLI`_ as provided on the specific HireFire `application page`_,
e.g.:

.. code-block:: bash

heroku config:set HIREFIRE_TOKEN=f69f0c0ddebe041248daf187caa6abb3e5d943ca

Now follow the quickstart guide below and don't forget to tweak the
options in the `HireFire management system`_.

For more help see the Hirefire `documentation`_.

.. _`Heroku CLI`: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-command
.. _`HireFire`: http://hirefire.io/
.. _`HireFire management system`: https://manager.hirefire.io/
.. _documentation: http://hirefire.io/documentation/guides/getting-started

Configuration
-------------

The ``hirefire`` Python package currently supports two frameworks:
Django and Tornado. Implementations for other frameworks are planned but
haven't been worked on: Flask_, Pyramid_ (PasteDeploy), WSGI_ middleware, ..

Feel free to `contribute one`_ if you can't wait.

The following guides imply you have defined at least one
``hirefire.procs.Proc`` subclass defined matching one of the processes in your
Procfile. For each process you want to monitor you have to have one subclass.

For example here is a ``Procfile`` which uses RQ_ for the "worker" proccess::

web: python manage.py runserver
worker: DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=mysite.settings rqworker high default low

Define a ``RQProc`` subclass somewhere in your project, e.g.
``mysite/procs.py``, with the appropriate attributes (``name`` and
``queues``)::

from hirefire.procs.rq import RQProc

class WorkerProc(RQProc):
name = 'worker'
queues = ['high', 'default', 'low']

See the procs API documentation if you're using another backend. Now follow
the framework specific guidelines below.

.. _`contribute one`: https://github.com/jezdez/hirefire/
.. _flask: http://flask.pocoo.org/
.. _Pyramid: http://www.pylonsproject.org/
.. _WSGI: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3333/

Django
^^^^^^

Setting up HireFire support for Django is easy:

#. Add ``'hirefire.contrib.django.middleware.HireFireMiddleware'`` to your
``MIDDLEWARE`` setting::
# Use ``MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES`` prior to Django 1.10
MIDDLEWARE = [
'hirefire.contrib.django.middleware.HireFireMiddleware',
# ...
]

Make sure it's the first item in the list/tuple.

#. Set the ``HIREFIRE_PROCS`` setting to a list of dotted paths to your
procs. For the above example proc::

HIREFIRE_PROCS = ['mysite.procs.WorkerProc']

#. Set the ``HIREFIRE_TOKEN`` setting to the token that HireFire
shows on the specific `application page`_ (optional)::

HIREFIRE_TOKEN = 'f69f0c0ddebe041248daf187caa6abb3e5d943ca'

This is only needed if you haven't set the ``HIREFIRE_TOKEN``
environment variable already (see the installation section how to
do that on Heroku).

.. _`application page`: https://manager.hirefire.io/applications

#. Check that the middleware has been correctly setup by opening the
following URL in a browser::

http://localhost:8000/hirefire/test

You should see an empty page with 'HireFire Middleware Found!'.

You can also have a look at the page that HireFire_ checks to get the
number of current tasks::

http://localhost:8000/hirefire/<HIREFIRE_TOKEN>/info

where ``<HIREFIRE_TOKEN>`` needs to be replaced with your token or
-- in case you haven't set the token in your settings or environment
-- just use ``development``.

Tornado
^^^^^^^

Setting up HireFire support for Tornado is also easy:

#. Use ``hirefire.contrib.tornado.handlers.hirefire_handlers`` when defining
your ``tornado.web.Application`` instance::

import os
from hirefire.contrib.tornado.handlers import hirefire_handlers

application = tornado.web.Application([
# .. some patterns and handlers
] + hirefire_handlers(os.environ['HIREFIRE_TOKEN'],
['mysite.procs.WorkerProc']))

Make sure to pass a list of dotted paths to the ``hirefire_handlers``
function.

#. Set the ``HIREFIRE_TOKEN`` environment variable to the token that HireFire
shows on the specific `application page`_ (optional)::

export HIREFIRE_TOKEN='f69f0c0ddebe041248daf187caa6abb3e5d943ca'

See the installation section above for how to do that on Heroku.

.. _`application page`: https://manager.hirefire.io/applications

#. Check that the handlers have been correctly setup by opening the
following URL in a browser::

http://localhost:8888/hirefire/test

You should see an empty page with 'HireFire Middleware Found!'.

You can also have a look at the page that HireFire_ checks to get the
number of current tasks::

http://localhost:8888/hirefire/<HIREFIRE_TOKEN>/info

where ``<HIREFIRE_TOKEN>`` needs to be replaced with your token or
-- in case you haven't set the token as an environment variable
-- just use ``development``.

Flask
^^^^^

Setting up HireFire support for Flask is (again!) also easy:

#. The module ``hirefire.contrib.flask.blueprint`` provides a
``build_hirefire_blueprint`` factory function that should be called with
HireFire token and procs as arguments. The result is a blueprint providing
the hirefire routes and which should be registered inside your app::

import os
from flask import Flask
from hirefire.contrib.flask.blueprint import build_hirefire_blueprint

app = Flask(__name__)
bp = build_hirefire_blueprint(os.environ['HIREFIRE_TOKEN'],
['mysite.procs.WorkerProc'])
app.register_blueprint(bp)

Make sure to pass a list of dotted paths to the ``build_hirefire_blueprint``
function.

#. Set the ``HIREFIRE_TOKEN`` environment variable to the token that HireFire
shows on the specific `application page`_ (optional)::

export HIREFIRE_TOKEN='f69f0c0ddebe041248daf187caa6abb3e5d943ca'

See the installation section above for how to do that on Heroku.

.. _`application page`: https://manager.hirefire.io/applications

#. Check that the handlers have been correctly setup by opening the
following URL in a browser::

http://localhost:8080/hirefire/test

You should see an empty page with 'HireFire Middleware Found!'.

You can also have a look at the page that HireFire_ checks to get the
number of current tasks::

http://localhost:8080/hirefire/<HIREFIRE_TOKEN>/info

where ``<HIREFIRE_TOKEN>`` needs to be replaced with your token or
-- in case you haven't set the token as an environment variable
-- just use ``development``.