OpenConext EngineBlock

Build Status:

License

See the LICENSE-2.0.txt file

Disclaimer

See the NOTICE.txt file

Upgrading

See the UPGRADING.md file

(Theme) Development

Please see the wiki for information on how to get started with developing themes for OpenConext EngineBlock In short, themes require front-end resource compilation which can be done by running the following commands:

    (cd theme && npm ci && npm run build)

To setup the required tooling on the VM, the following steps might be useful:

cd /opt/openconext/OpenConext-engineblock/theme
sudo curl --silent --location https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_11.x | sudo bash -
sudo yum install nodejs
(npm ci && npm run build)

System Requirements

• Linux
• Apache
• PHP 5.6:
  • libxml
• MySQL > 5.x with settings:
  • default-storage-engine=InnoDB
  • default-collation=utf8_unicode_ci
• Manage
• NPM (optional for theme deployment)

Note: While care was given to make EngineBlock as compliant as possible with mainstream Linux distributions, it is only regularly tested with RedHat Enterprise Linux and CentOS.

Installation

Note: you are advised to use OpenConext-Deploy to deploy OpenConext installations.

If you are reading this then you've probably already installed a copy of EngineBlock somewhere on the destination server, if not, then that would be step 1 for the installation.

If you do not use OpenConext-Deploy and have an installed copy and your server meets all the requirements above, then please follow the steps below to start your installation.

First, create an empty database

EXAMPLE

mysql -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 21
Server version: 5.0.77 Source distribution

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> create database engineblock default charset utf8 default collate utf8_unicode_ci;

Then configure application config

Copy over the example configuration file from the docs directory to /etc/openconext/engineblock.ini:

sudo mkdir /etc/openconext
sudo cp docs/example.engineblock.ini /etc/openconext/engineblock.ini

For the development VM, you should replace all occurrences of demo.openconext.org with vm.openconext.org.

Then edit this file with your favorite editor and review the settings to make sure it matches your configuration. The settings in the example.engineblock.ini are a subset of all configuration options, which can be found, along with their default value in application/configs/application.ini.

Note that EngineBlock requires you to set a path to a logfile, but you have to make sure that this file is writable by your webserver user.

After that, you are required to ensure the application is in bootable state. Assuming you are preparing your installation for a production environment, you have to run:

composer prepare-env

should you not have access to a local installation of composer, a version is shipped with EngineBlock, replace the composer part above with bin/composer.phar. This version is regularly updated, but may give warnings about being outdated.

Install database schema updates

To install possible database updates, call doctrine migrations by using the following console command:

app/console doctrine:migrations:migrate --env=prod

Note: EngineBlock requires database settings, without it doctrine migrate will not function. Furthermore, this assumes that the application must use the production settings (--env=prod), this could be replaced with dev should you run a development version.

Configure HTTP server

Configure a single virtual host, this should point to the web directory:

DocumentRoot    /opt/www/engineblock/web

It should also serve both the engine.yourdomain.example and engine-api.yourdomain.example domains.

Make sure the ENGINEBLOCK_ENV is set, and that the SYMFONY_ENV is set, this can be mapped from ENGINEBLOCK_ENV as:

ENGINEBLOCK_ENV	SYMFONY_ENV
production	prod
acceptance	acc
test	test
vm	dev

EXAMPLE

SetEnv ENGINEBLOCK_ENV !!ENV!!
SetEnv SYMFONY_ENV !!SF_ENV!!

Make sure you have the following rewrite rules (replace app.php with app_dev.php for development):

RewriteEngine On
# We support only GET/POST/HEAD
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !^(POST|GET|HEAD)$
RewriteRule .* - [R=405,L]
# If the requested url does not map to a file or directory, then forward it to index.php/URL.
# Note that the requested URL MUST be appended because Corto uses the PATH_INFO server variable
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /app.php/$1 [L] # Send the query string to index.php

# Requests to the domain (no query string)
RewriteRule ^$ app.php/ [L]

Note that EngineBlock SHOULD run on HTTPS, you can redirect users from HTTP to HTTPS with the following Apache rewrite rules on a *:80 VirtualHost:

RewriteEngine   on
RewriteCond     %{SERVER_PORT} ^80$
RewriteRule     ^(.*)$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}$1 [L,R=301]

Grab the front controller

Copy the app_dev.php.dist file to the web directory.

Openconext-engineblock $ cp app_dev.php.dist web/app_dev.php

Test your EngineBlock instance

Use these URLs to test your EngineBlock instance:

• http://engine.example.com, this should redirect you to the following URL
• https://engine.example.com, show a page detailing information about the capabilities
• https://engine.example.com/authentication/idp/metadata, this should present you with the IdP metadata of EngineBlock
• https://engine.example.com/authentication/sp/metadata, this should present you with the SP metadata of EngineBlock
• https://engine.example.com/authentication/proxy/idps-metadata, this should present you with the proxy IdP metadata
• https://engine-api.example.com, this should return an empty 200 OK response

Updating

It is recommended practice that you deploy engineblock in a directory that includes the version number and use a symlink to link to the 'current' version of EngineBlock.

EXAMPLE

.
..
engineblock -> engineblock-v1.6.0
engineblock-v1.5.0
engineblock-v1.6.0

If you are using this pattern, an update can be done with the following:

1. Download and deploy a new version in a new directory.

2. Check out the release notes in docs/release_notes/X.Y.Z.md (where X.Y.Z is the version number) for any additional steps.

3. Prepare your environment (see above)

    SYMFONY_ENV=prod composer prepare-env
   

4. Run the database migrations script.

    app/console doctrine:migrations:migrate --env=prod
   

5. Change the symlink.

Browsers support

The list of browsers that should be supported:

IE / Edge	Firefox	Chrome	Safari	iOS Safari	Samsung	Opera
IE10, IE11, Edge	last 2 versions	last 2 versions	last 2 versions	last 2 versions	last 2 versions	last 2 versions

The list of browsers being tested:

IE / Edge	Firefox	Chrome	Chrome Android	Safari	iOS Safari
IE11, Edge last version	last version	last version	last version	last version	last version

Additional Documentation

Most additional documentation can be found in the wiki. If you want to help with development for instance, you can take a look at the Development Guidelines

Also, the following documentation can be found in the docs directory:

1. License
2. Release Procedure
3. EngineBlock Input and Output Command Chains
4. Release notes for releases < 5.0.0