#Swift HelloWorld App Overview This project contains a simple Swift hello world application that can be deployed to Bluemix or run locally on your OS X or Ubuntu Linux system. This sample application creates a basic server that returns an HTML greeting to the client. Please note that this is not a production-ready application. Instead, it is for educational purposes to learn about the types of applications you can develop using the Swift programming language.
To compile and run this sample application on your system, you need to install the Swift compiler for your platform. Please note that the Swift language is evolving and changing rapidly. We have tested and executed this sample application using several of the different Swift versions that have been released such as 2.2-SNAPSHOT-2015-12-10-a and DEVELOPMENT-SNAPSHOT-2016-02-08-a.
We recommend downloading the DEVELOPMENT-SNAPSHOT-2016-02-08-a version of the Swift binaries, which is the latest version of Swift at the time of writing. You can follow the instructions provided on the Download Swift page for your platform.
If you are interested in manually deploying the application to Bluemix, you'd need to install the Cloud Foundry command line on your system. Once it is installed, you can use it to authenticate and access your Bluemix organization(s) and spaces. You can find further details on how to deploy this sample application to Bluemix in the following sections.
Once you have installed the Swift compiler and cloned this Git repo, you can now compile and run the application. Go to the root folder of this repo on your system and issue the following command:
$ swift build
You should see an output similar to the following:
Compiling Swift Module 'Utils' (5 sources)
Linking Library: .build/debug/Utils.a
Compiling Swift Module 'Server' (1 sources)
Linking Executable: .build/debug/Server
Once the application is successfully compiled, you can run the executable that was generated by the Swift compiler:
$ .build/debug/Server
You should see an output similar to the following:
Server is listening on port: 8000
To connect to the server, you can use the browser of your preference (e.g. Firefox, Chrome, etc.) to point to the following URL: http://<hostname>:8000/, where <hostname> is the hostname or the IP address of the system where you are running the sample app. If the browser is running on the same system, you can use localhost as the value for the hostname. After you access the server, the browser should render an HTML page with the following message:
Hello from Swift on Linux!
Click the magical button below to automatically deploy this sample application to Bluemix.
When automatically deploying to Bluemix, the manifest.yml file [included in the repo] is parsed to obtain the name of the application. For further details on the structure of the manifest.yml file, see the Cloud Foundry documentation.
You can also manually deploy the app to Bluemix. Though not as magical as using the Bluemix button above, manually deploying the app gives you some insights about what is happening behind the scenes. Remember that you'd need the Cloud Foundry command line installed on your system to deploy the app to Bluemix.
Using the Cloud Foundry command line you can get a list of the buildpacks (along with their versions) that are installed on Bluemix.
cf buildpacks
Executing the above command should result in output similar to the following:
Getting buildpacks...
buildpack position enabled locked filename
liberty-for-java 1 true false buildpack_liberty-for-java_v2.5-20160209-1336.zip
sdk-for-nodejs 2 true false buildpack_sdk-for-nodejs_v3.0-20160125-1224.zip
noop-buildpack 3 true false noop-buildpack-20140311-1519.zip
java_buildpack 4 true false java-buildpack-v3.5.1.zip
ruby_buildpack 5 true false ruby_buildpack-cached-v1.6.7.zip
nodejs_buildpack 6 true false nodejs_buildpack-cached-v1.5.0.zip
go_buildpack 7 true false go_buildpack-cached-v1.6.2.zip
python_buildpack 8 true false python_buildpack-cached-v1.5.1.zip
php_buildpack 9 true false php_buildpack-cached-v4.1.5.zip
swift_buildpack 10 true false swift_buildpack-v1.0.3.zip
aspnet5-experimental 11 true false buildpack_aspnet5-experimental_v0.7-20151022-1257.zip
xpages_buildpack 12 true false xpages_buildpack_v9.0.1-bmix-pb-20151217-8000.zip
aspnet5-experimental_v0_6-20150916-1220 13 true false buildpack_aspnet5-experimental_v0.6-20150916-1220.zip
liberty-for-java_v2_3-20151208-1311 14 true false buildpack_liberty-for-java_v2.3-20151208-1311.zip
sdk-for-nodejs_v2_8-20151209-1403 15 true false buildpack_sdk-for-nodejs_v2.8-20151209-1403.zip
Looking at the output above, we can see that Swift buildpack is installed on Bluemix. This will allow a seamless deployment of the starter application to Bluemix. After you have cloned this Git repo, go to its root folder on your system and issue the following command Cloud Foundry command:
cf push
Executing the Cloud Foundry push command will parse the contents of the manifest.yml file and upload the application to Bluemix. This action should generate an output similar to the following:
Using manifest file /Users/olivieri/git/swift-helloworld/manifest.yml
Creating app swift-helloworld in org john_doe@us.ibm.com / space dev as john_doe@us.ibm.com...
OK
Creating route swift-helloworld.mybluemix.net...
OK
Binding swift-helloworld.mybluemix.net to swift-helloworld...
OK
Uploading swift-helloworld...
Uploading app files from: /Users/olivieri/git/swift-helloworld
Uploading 553.9K, 76 files
Done uploading
OK
Starting app swift-helloworld in org john_doe@us.ibm.com / space dev as john_doe@us.ibm.com...
-----> Downloaded app package (256K)
-----> Buildpack version 1.0.3
-----> Installing Swift DEVELOPMENT-SNAPSHOT-2016-02-08-a
Downloaded Swift
-----> Installing Clang 3.7.0
Downloaded Clang
-----> Building Package
Compiling Swift Module 'Utils' (5 sources)
Linking Library: .build/release/Utils.a
Compiling Swift Module 'Server' (1 sources)
Linking Executable: .build/release/Server
-----> Copying dynamic libraries
-----> Copying binaries to 'bin'
-----> Cleaning up build files
-----> Uploading droplet (3.8M)
0 of 1 instances running, 1 starting
1 of 1 instances running
App started
OK
App swift-helloworld was started using this command `Server -bind 0.0.0.0:$PORT`
Showing health and status for app swift-helloworld in org john_doe@us.ibm.com / space dev as john_doe@us.ibm.com...
OK
requested state: started
instances: 1/1
usage: 128M x 1 instances
urls: swift-helloworld.mybluemix.net
last uploaded: Thu Feb 11 16:25:08 UTC 2016
stack: cflinuxfs2
buildpack: Swift
state since cpu memory disk details
#0 running 2016-02-11 10:27:43 AM 0.0% 6.4M of 128M 14M of 1G
Once the sample application is pushed to Bluemix, you can access it using its route. You can log on to your Bluemix account to find the route of your application or you can inspect the output from the execution of the cf push command. The string value (e.g. swift-helloworld.mybluemix.net) shown next to the urls should contain the route. Use that route as the URL to access the sample server using the browser of your choice. The browser should render an HTML page with the following message:
Hello from Swift on Linux!
If you look closely at the output above returned by the cf push command, you will notice that DEVELOPMENT-SNAPSHOT-2016-02-08-a was the Swift version used for compiling and running the sample app on Bluemix. If you would like to use a different version of the Swift language on Bluemix, say 2.2-SNAPSHOT-2015-12-10-a, you'd need to update the contents of the .swift-version file to:
swift-2.2-SNAPSHOT-2015-12-10-a
After updating the .swift-version file, you can run the cf push command one more time. This should upload the application to Bluemix and use the 2.2-SNAPSHOT-2015-12-10-a version of the Swift binaries for compiling and running the starter application as shown below:
Using manifest file /Users/olivieri/git/swift-helloworld/manifest.yml
Updating app swift-helloworld in org ricardo.olivieri@us.ibm.com / space dev as ricardo.olivieri@us.ibm.com...
OK
Uploading swift-helloworld...
Uploading app files from: /Users/olivieri/git/swift-helloworld
Uploading 555.9K, 75 files
Done uploading
OK
Stopping app swift-helloworld in org ricardo.olivieri@us.ibm.com / space dev as ricardo.olivieri@us.ibm.com...
OK
Starting app swift-helloworld in org ricardo.olivieri@us.ibm.com / space dev as ricardo.olivieri@us.ibm.com...
-----> Downloaded app package (256K)
-----> Downloaded app buildpack cache (258M)
-----> Buildpack version 1.0.3
-----> Installing Swift 2.2-SNAPSHOT-2015-12-10-a
Downloaded Swift
-----> Building Package
Compiling Swift Module 'Utils' (5 sources)
Linking Library: .build/release/Utils.a
Compiling Swift Module 'Server' (1 sources)
Linking Executable: .build/release/Server
-----> Copying dynamic libraries
-----> Copying binaries to 'bin'
-----> Cleaning up build files
-----> Uploading droplet (3.4M)
0 of 1 instances running, 1 starting
1 of 1 instances running
App started
OK
App swift-helloworld was started using this command `Server -bind 0.0.0.0:$PORT`
Showing health and status for app swift-helloworld in org ricardo.olivieri@us.ibm.com / space dev as ricardo.olivieri@us.ibm.com...
OK
requested state: started
instances: 1/1
usage: 128M x 1 instances
urls: swift-helloworld.mybluemix.net
last uploaded: Thu Feb 11 20:22:04 UTC 2016
stack: cflinuxfs2
buildpack: Swift
state since cpu memory disk details
#0 running 2016-02-11 02:25:52 PM 0.0% 4.9M of 128M 12.6M of 1G
For a complete list of the Swift versions supported by the Cloud Foundry Swift buildpack, see the buildpack's manifest file.
Once a new official release of the Cloud Foundry Swift buildpack is available, we will also make it available on Bluemix. Also, our team is currently working on a much more advanced version of this HTTP server that will be available soon. We also plan to provide Swift packages that will allow developers communicate with middleware services such as CouchDB and Cloudant. Stay tuned for updates!