README

This is a sample application that spins up the infrastructure required in order to set up a simple PHP application running with nginx + php-fpm on an ECS service. It is configured so that nginx and php run in separate containers inside the same task definition. Nginx handles external traffic and then proxies it to php.

Navigating the Code

The service-1 directory is a blank Yii2 application with:

docker-compose for running locally
nginx config for setting up the nginx proxy to php-fpm across containers
Dockerfile for building the prod images
a build-images.sh script which will let you easily build and push images to ECR (arm and amd)

All the CDK code is inside the infrastructure directory. The key parts are:

bin/app.ts - the main entrypoint for the CDK app. Not much happening other than configuring the environment
lib/globalStack.ts - imports a bunch of custom constructs to create the resources needed to deploy this (ECR repository, VPC, ECS Cluster, ECS Service) and creates the required resources
lib/constructs- each of the main logical infrastructure components have been wrapped in their own custom construct to help make clearer the different pieces of infra and to avoid one giant lib file. This level of abstraction is not necessary but has been chosen to make things clearer for the reader and provide a gentle introduction to the concept of CDK Constructs.

Deployment

This is a standard CDK app. To deploy it you can run npx cdk deploy from inside the infrastructure directory. It assumes you have AWS credentials in your environment. The app also relies on a number of other environment variables.

Fist Deployment

When deploying for the first time the stack will not create an ECS service because it needs to create an ECR repository for you to push your image tags to. You can create a bash script that looks like the following to easily deploy from a local environment.

#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail

export STAGE=demo
export APP_NAME=<your app name here>
export STACK_NAME=<your stack name here>

npx cdk deploy

Otherwise, setting the listed environment variables in your local shell context will also work. STAGE=foo APP_NAME=bar STACK_NAME=baz npx cdk deploy

Now you will be able to deploy the docker images to the created ECR repository by running the following command inside the service-1 directory ...

AWS_ACCOUNT_ID=<your account ID> AWS_REGION=<region> REGISTRY_NAME=<pick a name> build-images.sh

Regular Deployments

On subsequent deployments you pass the image tag to the bash command for deploying CDK that you want to promote to a production deploy. This allows you to build images outside of CKD for use in CI/CD etc. For example you might run (inside infrastructure directory)

# Where the tag hash is passed by your build pipeline
NGINX_IMAGE_TAG=nginx-15acea270b8476e4b2aa0de13bde868a \
PHP_IMAGE_TAG=php-fpm-15acea270b8476e4b2aa0de13bde868a \
STAGE=foo \
APP_NAME=bar \
STACK_NAME=baz \
npx cdk deploy

Verifying Deployment

In order to verify that everything deployed correctly you can:

log into the AWS console
navigate to the ECS dashboard
Click on the cluster created from the CDK stack
Click on the service that is listed in the Services tab
Navigate to the "Tasks" tab
Click on the listed Task

At this point the breadcrumbs in the console should show:

Amazon Elastic Container Service > Clusters > your cluster > Services > your service > Tasks > task ID > Configuration

Here you should be able to see a COnfiguration panel that lists a Public IP on the right hand side. If you click this IP you should be routed to a (currently broken) Yii application.

Notes

There is currently an error with the Dockerfile for building the production Yii application. Deploying this app with throw a Yii DI error indicating that the app is not bootstrapping correctly. This may or may not be fixed in a follow-up PR but is also not the point of this example (which is a working ECS application)
This example was originally going to show a multi-service setup - hence the service-1 directory and allusions to "globalStack" and multi service config in CDK. I may or may not end up expanding this example in the future but as of right now it is a single service example and so some of those decisions may not make sense. Use your judgement when using this repo as a guide.