CodeSpaces

CodeSpaces is a GitHub project that enables you to use VSCode in your Browser to develop on rapidly deployed docker containers. It's quite remarkable.

Making API Logic Server work with Codespaces

This page describes the (internal) journey to make Codespaces work. It is intended to provide feedback to the Codespaces team, and perhaps to others trying to make projects works with Codespaces.

To use Codespaces, see the procedure here.

TL;DR:

With a fair amount of help, I can now create executable API Logic Server Projects with minimal configuration. Open items are:

Ability to push created project to new git repo (this is the biggest item)
Cleaner way to compute the Host Address
Cleaner way to create public Ports

Creating containerized projects

Containerized API Logic Project creation was already provided, so I was able to create projects and open them in Codespaces with no additional work.

Host and Port Configuration

API Logic Server creates web apps, so is senstive to Host and Port designations.

First Try: Manual Host and Port Configuration

After some investigation and help from forums, I was able to define Run Configurations to make API Logic Server Projects run, like this:

        {
            "name": "Codespaces-ApiLogicServer",
            "type": "python",
            "request": "launch",
            "program": "api_logic_server_run.py",
            "redirectOutput": true,
            "justMyCode": false,
            "args": [
                "--flask_host=localhost", "--port=5656", "--verbose=True",
                "--swagger_host=valhuber-tutorial-apilogicproject-jjr5qwg72vxg-5656.githubpreview.dev", 
                "--swagger_port=443", "--http_type=https"
            ],
            "console": "integratedTerminal"
        },

I regarded this as barely adequate, far too fiddly to be considered friendly. So, I looked for ways to automate this, so you could run with the standard Run Configuration, either in Codespaces or locally:

        {
            "name": "ApiLogicServer",
            "type": "python",
            "request": "launch",
            "program": "api_logic_server_run.py",
            "redirectOutput": true,
            "justMyCode": false,
            "args": ["--flask_host=localhost", "--port=5656", "--swagger_host=localhost", "--verbose=False"],
            "console": "integratedTerminal"
        },

Automated Host Address / Port Configuration

For this, I updated api_logic_server_run.py (the python file that starts the server):

    use_codespace_defaulting = True  # experimental support to run default launch config
    if use_codespace_defaulting and os.getenv('CODESPACES') and swagger_host == 'localhost':
        app_logger.info('\n Applying Codespaces default port settings')
        swagger_host = os.getenv('CODESPACE_NAME') + '-5656.githubpreview.dev'
        swagger_port = 443
        http_type = 'https'

Good progress, enabling users to run locally or in Codespaces with the same Run Configuration (shown above). But it still required users to create the port, so I wanted to automate that...

Automated Port Creation

The Codecpaces team showed me how to create ports in the .devcontainer/devcontainer.json, adding lines like:

    "portsAttributes": {
        "5656": {
            "label": "AdminApp"
        }
    },

    // Use 'forwardPorts' to make a list of ports inside the container available locally.
    "forwardPorts": [5656],

A big step forward, but it failed because the Port was not public.

Make the created port public

This link describes how to work around missing setting for creating public ports.

This approach relies upon the gh CLI. Adding this to the devcontainer installs the gh CLI,

    "features": {
        "github-cli": "latest"
      },

    "postAttachCommand": "/bin/bash .devcontainer/setup.sh"

This enables us to /bin/bash .devcontainer/setup.sh:

gh codespace ports visibility 5656:public -c $CODESPACE_NAME

As noted in form, this may be subject to race conditions, so I also updated the .bashrc built by ApiLogicServer:

if [[ -z "${CODESPACES}" ]]; then
  LOAD_GIT="Not Codespaces"
else
  echo "Now: gh codespace ports visibility 5656:public -c $CODESPACE_NAME"
  gh codespace ports visibility 5656:public -c $CODESPACE_NAME
fi

Not pretty, but API Logic Server users would not see this.

@nbsp;

Outstanding Items

Create New Projects from Codespaces (currently not working)

We also explored creating a new project from the Codespaces example itself. You can create projects under Codespaces just as you do for local installs:

Create new project in Codespaces

cd ..   # back to the Workspaces folder
ApiLogicServer create --db_url= --project_name=fromcs

Problems occur, however, when you try to add existing project to git:

Create fromcs on GitHub (leave it empty to avoid merges)
Attempt to push:

Push to git (fails)

cd fromcs        # created above
git init
git branch -m main  # as required... git projects often created with this as default branch (vs. say, master)
git add .
git commit -m 'First commit'
git remote add origin https://github.com/valhuber/fromcs.git
git remote -v
git remote set-url origin "https://valhuber@github.com/valhuber/fromcs.git"
git push origin main  # may need to be master
      remote: Permission to valhuber/fromcs.git denied to valhuber.
      fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/valhuber/fromcs.git/': The requested URL returned error: 403```

Git config status:
```bash title="git config --list"
api_logic_server@codespaces-9f8d7a:/workspaces/fromcs$ git config --list
      credential.helper=/.codespaces/bin/gitcredential_github.sh
      user.name=Val Huber
      user.email=valjhuber@gmail.com
      gpg.program=/.codespaces/bin/gh-gpgsign
      core.repositoryformatversion=0
      core.filemode=true
      core.bare=false
      core.logallrefupdates=true
      remote.origin.url=https://github.com/valhuber/fromcs.git
      remote.origin.fetch=+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
      api_logic_server@codespaces-9f8d7a:/workspaces/fromcs$