Creating a new virtual host

This page describes how to create a new Elentra vhost instance locally, in order to avoid switching versions in the same vhost (and the mayhem that typically ensues)

Creating a separate virtual host (vhost), with its own clone of the elentra-1x-me repository, and its own database, can be very useful because it allows you to keep the same version (e.g. release/1.26), without needing to switch between versions when you need to work on a different Elentra version.

By setting up additional vhosts, you can have local Elentra instances for multiple versions of Elentra, for example your institution's branded edition and the consortium version, or previously-supported releases.

For the purposes of this example, we will suppose that you are creating a new vhost called uni-elentra.localhost, i.e. which you would access using http://uni-elentra.localhost/.

Steps

1. Change to the elentra-developer directory:

   cd ~/Documents/elentra-developer

2. Create a new Apache configuration file for the new vhost:

   cp resources/vhosts/elentra-1x-me.localhost.conf resources/vhosts/uni-elentra.localhost.conf

3. Modify the new resources/vhosts/uni-elentra.localhost.conf file to use a different source code path and hostname, for example the following:

   # Disable so that CSS/JS will refresh properly.
   EnableSendfile On
   
   <VirtualHost *:80>
       ServerName uni-elentra.localhost                          # <- CHANGE
   
       # Required because of /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf hardcoded defaults
       <IfModule mod_php7.c>
           php_value session.save_handler redis
           php_value session.save_path "tcp://redis:6379?auth=password"
       </IfModule>
   
       DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/uni-elentra-1x-me/www-root   # <- CHANGE
       <Directory "/var/www/vhosts/uni-elentra-1x-me/www-root">  # <- CHANGE
           Options FollowSymLinks
           Require all granted
           AllowOverride all
       </Directory>
   
       <FilesMatch \.(php|phar)$>
           SetHandler "proxy:unix:/var/run/php-fpm/www.sock|fcgi://localhost"
       </FilesMatch>
   
       ProxyPass "/app/" "ws://localhost:${WEBSOCKET_PORT}/app/"
       ProxyPassReverse "/app/" "ws://localhost:${WEBSOCKET_PORT}/app/"
       ProxyPass "/apps/" "http://localhost:${WEBSOCKET_PORT}/apps/"
       ProxyPassReverse "/apps/" "http://localhost:${WEBSOCKET_PORT}/apps/"
   </VirtualHost>

   • If your new instance will run a version of Elentra ME that uses an older version of PHP (e.g. 7.4), then you may want to hard code the the version of the PHP in the sock file used. This way, you won't have to manually switch PHP versions when developing on multiple versions at the same time:

         <FilesMatch \.(php|phar)$>
             SetHandler "proxy:unix:/var/opt/php/7.4/run/php-fpm/www.sock|fcgi://localhost"
         </FilesMatch>

   • For the new changes to take effect, restart the docker container:

     ./developer down
     ./developer up

4. Add an entry to the /etc/hosts file for the new vhost:

   127.0.0.1	uni-elentra.localhost

5. Clone the elentra-1x-me and elentra-1x-api repositories from your remote, for example:

   cd ~/Sites
   git clone [e-mail]:MyUni/elentra-1x-me.git uni-elentra-1x-me
   git clone [e-mail]:MyUni/elentra-1x-api.git uni-elentra-1x-api

6. Set up the composer dependencies as per the Getting Started section.

   ./developer shell
   cd /var/www/vhosts/uni-elentra-1x-me
   composer install
   npm install
   npm run build

7. Create an empty database (or optionally import/scrub from staging)

   CREATE DATABASE uni_elentra_auth;
   CREATE DATABASE uni_elentra_me;
   CREATE DATABASE uni_elentra_me_clerkship;
   CREATE DATABASE uni_elentra_cbe;
   
   GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON uni_elentra_auth.* TO elentra;
   GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON uni_elentra_me.* TO elentra;
   GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON uni_elentra_me_clerkship.* TO elentra;
   GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON uni_elentra_cbe.* TO elentra;

8. Run the setup script by visiting http://uni-elentra.localhost/.

   • Update the hostname to be http://uni-elentra.localhost instead of the default.

   • Update the database to be uni_elentra_me, uni_elentra_auth, etc. instead of the defaults.

9. Run the database migrations in the elentra-1x-me directory:

   php elentra migrate --up