In this guide we will walk through how to build applications on top of Styx.
Building Styx requires Java 21.
The build system requires Apache Maven. The Styx team uses Maven version 3 for automated continuous integration builds. On Mac OSX, a version installed by HomeBrew is satisfactory.
To clone and build styx afresh:
$ git clone https://github.com/HotelsDotCom/styx.git
$ cd styx
$ make release-no-tests
This produces a file distribution/target/styx.zip.
If styx-test/ already exists, remove it first to avoid conflicts on dependencies:
$ rm -rf styx-test
Let's unzip this file:
$ unzip distribution/target/styx-<VERSION>.zip -d styx-test
Now, start the styx server:
$ APP_originsFile=`pwd`/styx-test/styx/conf/origins.yml ./styx-test/styx/bin/startup
Running Styx startup...
...
/plenty of output/
...
Note APP_originsFile specifies a Styx origins file path. It substitutes a placeholder
in the default server configuration file styx-test/styx/conf/default.yml. Normally
you would just specify the path in a server configuration itself, either as an absolute
path, or a path relative to the Styx server working directory. But for now we'll just pass
it in to start the server from your project working directory.
Finally you will see:
INFO 2017-10-13 14:56:24 [c.h.s.s.n.NettyServer] [Admin-Boss-0-Thread] - server connector class com.hotels.styx.server.netty.WebServerConnectorFactory$WebServerConnector bound successfully on port 9000
INFO 2017-10-13 14:56:24 [c.h.s.StyxServer] [main] - Started styx server in 68ms
Once Styx server has started, the admin dashboard is available at http://localhost:9000/. You are presented with the Styx admin root interface which shows various configurations, health check endpoints and metrics data. Click on Dashboard link to open up the internal Styx dashboard. You will see some example origins configured. Note that none of them are active since those servers have not been started.
To stop Styx server, kill it by hitting Ctrl-C in the terminal window.
Let's point Styx to some stub services. Start Styx as follows:
$ make start-with-origins
This will rebuild the Styx project, and start it with some test origins. An Origin in Styx jargon refers to an instance of a Backend Service. A Backend Service is a collection of servers. An origin is just one of those servers.
Now take some time to explore the admin interface again. Via the admin interface, you can explore:
- The Dashboard
- Server settings
- Settings for Backend Services
- Backend service statuses
- Styx and Origins Metrics
Styx logs are located in styx-test/logs/styx.log. You can see them using:
$ cat styx-test/logs/styx.log
And see the startup logs using:
$ cat styx-test/logs/startup.log
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Styx API Overview - Styx programming API overview.
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Plugins - How to develop plugins.
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Plugins Scenarios - How to implement different traffic handling scenarios in plugins.