Rafter 🏡

Update: Rafter is pivoting to a hosted model. This open-source code remains as a fun reference. Enjoy!

Rafter is a serverless deployment platform powered by Google Cloud. It leverages Google Cloud Run (and many other tools) to transform your Git repository into a fully-scalable serverless application running in the cloud - with zero configuration.

💰 Scales to zero when not in use, saving you money — perfect for hobby projects

🔥 Automatically scales to handle load

🔌 Manages, connects and creates Cloud SQL databases for your applications automatically

⚡️ Connects to GitHub and supports deploy-on-push

🚀 Spin up multiple environments available at vanity URLs at the click of a button

✨ No Dockerfiles required

⚠️ Rafter is still very much a work-in-progress! ⚠️

Google Cloud Services

Cloud Run (web service)

Official Documentation

• Creates services for each environment of each project, automatically
• Cloud Run handles all traffic roll-out, scaling, and configuration
• Environment variables are assigned to each unique service through the API

Cloud Build (image creation)

Official Documentation

• Docker images are created when code is pushed to GitHub
• Dockerfile is automatically provided based on type of project
• Currently supported: Laravel, Node.js

Cloud SQL (database)

Official Documentation

• Database instances are provisioned by Rafter through the API
• Databases are created and assigned to projects automatically using the Admin API
• Environmental variables are properly assigned based on type of project

Cloud Firestore (cache and session drivers)

UPDATE: This… doesn’t work great, due to a number of factors. Looking into alternatives.

Official Documentation

• NoSQL database to support key-value caching and session management
• Drivers integrated automatically based on project
• No additional credentials required for consumer apps to use, since credentials are supplied within Cloud Run

Cloud Tasks (queue driver)

Official Documentation

• Robust queue management platform
• Queues are automatically created for each environment
• Dedicated Cloud Run service is created for each project to handle incoming jobs through HTTP request payloads
• No daemon or worker instance is required
• Since Cloud Run is serverless, instances can fan out, thousands of jobs can be processed in a matter of seconds

Cloud Storage (image artifacts and uploads)

Official Documentation

• Object storage, similar to S3
• Automatically handles uploaded artifacts from Cloud Build
• Integrated into application helpers based on project type to handle user uploads

Cloud Scheduler

Official Documentation

• Used for firing cron events in e.g. Laravel

Cloud Logging

Official Documentation

• HTTP requests, stdout and app logs displayed inside Rafter log viewer

Roadmap

Here are things I’d like to work on next:

• [x] Extract laravel-rafter-core into a package
• [ ] Inject Laravel Stackdriver log driver config
• Support other projects:
  • [x] Node
  • [ ] WordPress
  • [ ] Rails
  • [ ] Go
  • [ ] Custom Dockerfile
• [ ] Email driver support (does Google offer this as part of GCP?)
• [ ] Integration of Secret Manager
• [x] Integration of commands
• [ ] Integration of GCS for better uploads with Laravel
• [ ] Better Database operations
• [ ] Leverage GitHub Deployment API to mark when a branch has been deployed
• Lots of UI upgrades:
  • [x] Log viewer
  • [ ] Database information
  • [ ] User profile/settings
• Better Cloud Build optimization
  • [x] Clone using ZIP instead of Git
  • [x] Use secrets rather than plain text tokens for security
  • [ ] Consider adding multistage builds for Nodejs, Composer building steps
• [ ] Implement Custom Domain assignment and onboarding
• [ ] Implement an environment deletion workflow to delete resources/schedulers/etc
• [ ] Allow users to clone a public project without having to connect a source provider
• [ ] Create a CLI to allow users to push a local project without connecting a source provider

Development notes

• Clone it
• Use Valet to run it and connect to a local MySQL database
• Run make share to fire up ngrok.io local tunnel
• Requires grpc PHP extension to be installed locally: pecl install grpc

Inspiration

• Laravel Vapor and Laravel Forge
• Heroku