Tag: DotNetCookingPlan

Dev log [DotNetCookingPlan]: Deployment to personal server with Docker and Cloudflare tunnel

Today I worked on this little project for one hour and the main goal is to make it relatively easy to deploy the Cooking Plan application to my personal server for usage easily. For the first iteration I decided to use a simple method with Docker Compose. The goal is to make deployment to the server relatively easy so that changes can be updated and used quickly. I find that this simple project can help with applying some knowledge I gained from work, and it’s also quite fun.

The tools used to achieve this goal are

  1. Docker and Docker compose, and personal DockerHub registry.
  2. A personal server, I bought a second hand Intel NUC computer below for cheap, and installed Ubuntu server to it.

An Intel NUC, cheap and does not take much electricity.

3. Cloudflare tunnels: https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/products/tunnel/

4. Some cheap domain name bought from Namecheap

The application is containerized into two simple containers, just one DotNet WebApp container and one MySQL container, the database is stored in a separate volume so data is not gone when container is down.

In order to access the application from the Internet, I use a cheap domain name I bought for personal use. Then install Cloudflare tunnel daemon to the Intel NUC, then log in to Cloudflare and configure traffic to the domain to forward to the Intel NUC on HTTP port 8001, Cloudflare automatically enable TLS for the domain.

Port 8001 of the server is mapped to port 80 of the WebApp container, the WebApp container is configured to connect to the MySQL database instance in another container.

The cycle to build, update and deploy is manual but is fairly easy, all is accomplished using a docker-compose.yml file.

The process is like this

  • In development machine, run docker compose build to build local images.
  • Run docker compose push to push the images to personal DockerHub registry.
  • Use the same docker-compose.yml file in the NUC and just run
    • docker compose down
    • docker compose pull
    • docker compose up -d

And Docker will pull the latest images and start the containers, and they are available right away on Internet through Cloudflare tunnel.

It’s a good start for quick deployments/dogfooding and development.

Simple under-development home cooking planner.

Dev log [DotNetCookingPlan]: Revisiting meal planner

Recently I have been trying to study new technologies after changing to a new job and was quite tired. I tried to study “properly” by taking notes while reading books or watching course videos. It was not quite fun and not really the approach I used when I was a kid exploring the world of computer programming.

I decided to throw away my to do list, kanban board, etc and just jump into building something that I would actually use. I remember fondly of experimenting and using programming knowledge to build something either “cool” or useful, and it was very effective in learning new programming languages and frameworks.

I remember it was really boring attending lectures at University, and studying was not very effective. I guess the human brain needs rewards and feeling little successes to carry on doing or studying anything.

It’s the same story with learning to play an instrument, it’s very boring to follow some music sheet that the instructor gives you, but if you try to play some music that you actually like, it’s much easier to motivate yourself to continue practicing and learning.

I decided to rewrite the Meal planner application, this time as a full ASP.NET Core application using Razor pages. I took notes and studied ASP.NET Core before but the knowledge went away after long time.

The simple application will be improved incrementally and eventually be deployed inside a Kubernetes “cluster” hosted in a small personal server. Making this small application will allow me to

  • Have some practice in using Razor pages.
  • Revisit using Entity Framework Core with Code first migration, using MySQL database engine.
  • Containerize the application in a few containers using Docker and docker-compose, with volume mounts.
  • Repackage and deploy the application to a Kubernetes cluster, perhaps first by creating K8s manifests, and then by writing Helm charts.
  • Maybe eventually setup some CI/CD.

And the bonus is that I will use this project to plan my weekly cooking and grocery shopping, which is useful.

After this is done, I may improve on this project by converting it to ASP.NET Core web project with React.js. To revisit my React programming knowledge. However, to be more focused, I may not invest too much into frontend programming anymore.