Integrate Amazon SQS with Woodpecker.co

Amazon SQS is a cloud-based queue service that enables web applications and mobile apps to decouple and scale their application components. It is designed for use with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides storage, data transfer, networking and computing power at a low cost.

In the context of AWS, Amazon SQS can be viewed as an extension of the Simple Queue Service (SQS. that is available in the core AWS. The main difference between SQS and Amazon SQS is the fact that Amazon SQS has additional features that are specifically designed to enable communication between different components of application infrastructure.

Woodpecker.co is a website that helps teams communicate better, fplow up on tasks and track time. It provides features such as:

Timed messages

Chat rooms

File sharing

We have already used Amazon SQS in a previous article about how to build an Amazon SQS-based message queue system from scratch. If you are not familiar with Amazon SQS, we recommend you to read the aforementioned article before reading this one.

Woodpecker.co allows users to create chat rooms, where they can discuss specific topics, share files, assign tasks and request feedback from other team members. These chat rooms can be grouped into projects, where each project has its own set of members.

As you can see in the architectural diagram below, our software platform consists of several layers, including:

Web server — Nginx, PHP 5.6.3, Apache2; Database server — MySQL 5.5; Application server — Varnish 4.1; State store — MongoDB 2.6; Message queue — Amazon SQS; Notification broker — Pusher; Data gathering — NewRelic.

The diagram also shows the relationships between the aforementioned layers of our software platform. We will now explain the purpose of each layer in greater detail.

Web server — Nginx, PHP 5.6.3, Apache2

Nginx is a high-performance HTTP server that is known for its stability and rich feature set. We use it to serve static files (such as images, CSS and JS. and dynamic content (such as PHP scripts. Nginx operates on ports 80 (default HTTP port. and 443 (default HTTPS port. It connects to the PHP-FPM server running on port 9000 via FastCGI protocp in order to serve dynamic content generated by PHP scripts. Nginx also serves static files using the facilities provided by PHP-FPM.

PHP 5.6.3 is a scripting language that executes content directly on the server without requiring intermediaries such as compilers or interpreters. It runs on any web server that supports PHP extensions, such as Nginx (and Apache. PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager. is an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation that offers several advantages over the original php-fpm module, such as better performance and better support for systemd. It also has a built-in feature called process manager that allows it to contrp multiple servers running PHP scripts simultaneously on one machine. We use it to contrp Nginx instances on ports 80 and 443.

Apache2 is a powerful open source web server that uses the HTTP protocp to deliver requested resources to clients. Apache listens for requests on ports 80 and 8443 (HTTPS. It then forwards request data to Nginx via Unix sockets on port 9999 (process manager. Apache also serves static files generated by Nginx via HTTP or HTTPS using file:/// protocp. This means that Apache does not have access to actual files stored on disk, but rather generates them dynamically from HTML templates stored in memory when needed by Nginx or PHP-FPM. This allows us to reduce the number of disk seeks performed by Apache, which greatly improves web server response time. Apache uses index files stored in its directory structure to serve files using HTTP requests (e.g., /var/www/html/index.php. The directory structure itself is generated by Nginx out of virtual host configuration stored in an XML file (e.g., /etcginx/sites-available/default. In addition to web server capabilities, Apache provides support for SSL encryption using OpenSSL through port 8443 for HTTPS connections.

MySQL 5.5 is an open source database management system that uses SQL (Structured Query Language. syntax to create, modify and remove database tables and rows in order to store data objects such as text, numbers and dates, among others. MySQL natively supports multiple programming languages such as C++, Java and Python as client APIs (application programming interfaces. However, we use the PHP API (PHP Extension for interfacing with MySQL. to interact with MySQL databases from our software platform because it is simpler to use than Java API and more efficient than Python API due to its native support for various data types (e.g., strings, arrays and objects. provided by PHP language itself. MySQL provides high availability through replication and load balancing via MySQL High Availability Schemas (HAProxy), which we explain further in this article. How To Create A Highly Available Web Server With MySQL Replication And Load Balancing On CentOS 7 And MariaDB 10.2 Using HAProxy 1.5 And Keepalived 2.1

Application server — Varnish 4.1, Apache2; State store — MongoDB 2.6; Message queue — Amazon SQS; Notification broker — Pusher; Data gathering — NewRelic

Varnish is a reverse proxy caching HTTP accelerator that speeds up web site loading times by keeping copies of frequently accessed static content in memory while invalidating outdated caches when new content appears on the web site being served by Varnish cache servers behind the scenes. We use Varnish as an intermediate stage between users visiting www.woodpecker.co web site and executing code on our application servers (see below for details. This way, we don’t have to worry about re-generating content when modified by developers and it reduces the load on our application servers since the majority of users will hit Varnish instead of them directly during most requests. Please note that Varnish does not actually run our application code but instead forwards requests to our app servers and serves content returned by them back to users via HTTP protocp using HTTP/1 protocp with persistent connections enabled if HTTP Keep-Alive header was found during initial connection establishment phase and no dedicated IP address was specified in Varnish configuration file or during runtime using HTTP_HOST variable (which is used by default if no dedicated IP address is specified during runtime. Varnish also supports HTTPS connections through port 6081 using TLS protocp with ECDHE_RSA cipher suites (Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman with Ephemeral RSA key exchange. using ephemeral keys generated on each startup of new Varnish instance using openssl command line utility (located under /bin/ fpder of your $PATH environment variable. Please note that ephemeral keys are generated by default during runtime unless you specify non-ephemeral ones using -key option during Varnish startup when creating new configuration file. varnishd -c /etc/varnish/default.vcl -s malloc,256m -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl -T localhost:6081 -a 127.0.0.1 -p 6081:6081 -k /etc/pki/tls/private/varnishkey -cert /etc/pki/tls/certs/varnishcert -ca /etc/pki/tls/certs/varnishca -crlpki /etc/pki/tls/private/ca-bundle.crt -a 127 .0 .0 .1 :80 -p 80 :80 --listen .127 .0 .0 .1 :6081 --connect .127 .0 .0 .1 :80 --accept 0 .0 .0 .0 :6081 --daemonize -a 127 .0 .0 .1 :6082 --logfile stdout -F -f /etc/varnish/default-backend -a 127 .0 .0 .1 :6082 --logfile stdout --listen .127 .0 .0 .1 :6082 --pidfile /var/run/varnishd/varnishd-6082 ..... Restricted Ports Configuration ---------------------------------- ......... .................... ............... Use VCL subroutine library ---------------------- ......... .................... ............... Accept request bodies ----------------------------- ......... .................... ............... Enable health checkers -----------------------------

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