Repressing fronts

The JSON output created by Facia-press that is ingested by Facia does not have the properties that Facia is expecting. You need to re-press the fronts to re-create the JSON. Read the Fronts architecture here.

Tests failing (PR Build & Locally)

Tests are failing because of mis pressed data committed. In the Teamcity PR build, you can see things like:

• FaciaMetaDataTest.should Include item list metadata
• FaciaMetaDataTest.should Include organisation metadata
• FaciaControllerTest.should render fronts in mf2 format
• FaciaControllerTest.should render fronts in mf2 format (no section provided)
• FaciaControllerTest.should render fronts with content that has been pre-fetched from facia-press

Repressing fronts locally.

Prerequisites

• Check your facia.stage property in your frontend.conf file is pointing at DEV (not PROD!)
• Check you are using your own switches file and not the PROD or CODE one.
  • To do this, create your own properties file in the the S3 bucket named aws-frontend-store. Add it to your frontend.conf like this: switches.key=DEV/config/switches-nbaltazar.properties
• Ensure you have the test AWS SQS queues in your frontend.conf properties
  • Add two properties: frontpress.sqs.tool_queue_url and frontpress.sqs.cron_queue_url
  • Set both properties to the value "https://sqs.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/<id-here>/Frontend-TEST-page-presser-queue"
  • You can get the correct ID by going to SQS in the AWS console and finding the Frontend-TEST-page-presser-queue and find the URL field in the details tab
• Ensure your CAPI endpoint is PROD (content.api.host in frontend.conf)

Let's go.

• Delete the files in data/pressedPage/
• Run the admin project locally and turn on facia-press-on-demand and facia-inline-embeds switch
• Stop admin and run facia-press locally
• Go to http://localhost:9000 just to get the switches file warmed up, then

curl -v -X POST http://localhost:9000/press/live/music
curl -v -X POST http://localhost:9000/press/live/inline-embeds
curl -v -X POST http://localhost:9000/press/live/uk
curl -v -X POST http://localhost:9000/press/live/au/media

• Stop facia press, switch to facia project and run test
  • Re-running the tests will recreate the JSON in the data/pressedPage folder - you'll need to commit those files.
  • Note: The S3 buckets for pressed fronts and configs can be found in the CMS for Fronts account rather than the Frontend one on AWS. There is old data probably hanging around the Frontend account but you want to be looking at CMS if you're wondering why tests aren't working.

Shipping

This is more tricky especially if you are making a breaking change (i.e. new facia can't work with the old format and old facia can't work with the new)

Adding a new field

If you just ship new facia without pressing things will break until the presser kicks in.

Prepare the ground

• Choose a quiet time of day, and this will take an hour
• Can you ssh onto the facia-press instances for CODE and PROD? No?
• Turn off continuous integration for CODE and PROD (via riff-raff)
• Block deploys: Add a restriction to Riff-Raff
• Let team know what you're doing
• Email core central prod to let them know preview fronts may error
• Merge to main

CODE: get the field into the pressed json

• Deploy facia-press & turn on the facia-press-on-demand switch in CODE gutools
• Set the facia-press AWS auto scaling group desired value to 2
• SSH into the facia presser instance and post to http://localhost:9000/press/draft/all (have patience, it takes a couple of mins) to repress all the draft fronts (curl -v -X POST -H 'Content-Length: 0' http://localhost:9000/press/draft/all)
  • The reason we SSH in and hit localhost instead of curling the ELB is because the curl request times out before the response.
• Back in CODE frontend.gutools go to /press and click Standard Frequency Fronts For Press, then wait a while for the most used CODE fronts to press
  • Monitor the SQS queue size to know when it's done (frontend-CODE-FrontPressCronJobQueue-*)
• Check that code facia still works (e.g. /uk and click around to some other fronts)
  • If you want to debug, go to a facia press load balancer: http://<frontend-faciapre-elb>/pressed/live/uk/money to see the JSON format
  • If you're adding a field, things will likely work fine as the old format should just ignore your new field.

CODE: now that the field is there, both the new and old facia should work

• Once you're happy, deploy facia and check things still work (/uk etc)
• Deploy everything else in dotcom

PROD: get the field into the pressed json

• Deploy facia-press & turn on the facia-press-on-demand switch in PROD gutools
• SSH into the facia presser instance and post to http://localhost:9000/press/draft/all (have patience, it takes a couple of mins) to repress all the draft fronts (curl -v -X POST -H 'Content-Length: 0' http://localhost:9000/press/draft/all)
• The fronts in prod are pressed automatically every 5 minutes, but if you like, use frontend.gutools to /press them - if you do just click All Frequency Fronts For Press. This will be speedy due to multiple instances.
• Point your local machine to facia.stage=PROD in frontend.conf and make sure everything is working before you deploy for real
• Deploy preview and check it still works
• Deploy facia etc and check they still work
• Deploy everything else and check they still work

Important Cleanup

• Turn off the facia-press-on-demand switches
• Set the facia-press AWS auto scaling group desired value back to what it was
• Turn on auto deploys again
• Change your local machine back to DEV facia bucket!
• Unblock deploys (remove the restriction in Riff-Raff)
• Let Central Prod know things are hunky-dory
• Celebrate! 🎉

Removing a field

Follow the above instructions, only deploy the new facia (that doesn't need the field) first, check it works, and then follow the presser steps to repress the fronts without the field.

Renaming/changing a field

This is a real pain because at the moment you just have to ship one change to add the new field, and another to remove the old field. If you hit this situation, you're going to need to think hard.

A front won't re-press and facia-press is returning not found

If you are seeing a 500 for a front and you can't re-press it try to access it via the elb (http://<frontend-faciapre-elb>/pressed/live/uk/money).

If it returns Not found:

• Check whether the fronts tool for that front has any error messages. If so - delete that item.
• Check the fronts tool /editorial/config
  • Open each item in the front and click check on each of the backfills
• If the backfills are fine, check the snaps
  • In the fronts tool /editorial, find the sections that contain snaps, the titles are surrounded by { curly braces }
  • In the fronts tool /config find the collections associated with those snap sections and go to /config/<collection-id> for each one
  • Make sure that all snapUri values, where the path is a realtive tag path and snapType is latest, return a valid response from internal CAPI
  • Eg: If "snapUri": "lifeandstyle/series/modern-tribes" check http://<capi>/lifeandstyle/series/gardening-what-to-do-this-week
  • When you find it... delete it from the fronts tool and refresh