Quickstart

This 10-minute guide will show you how to run an entire Hermes environment, create topic and subscription and publish some messages.

Setting up the environment

Currently, there is only one way of setting up the environment - using docker.

Prerequisites

If you want to run hermes with docker, you need to have:

• Docker Engine
• Docker Compose
• curl
• some running receiver service (in this guide we'll use webhook.site)

Setup

In order to run hermes in docker, you need to have the docker-compose file that can be found here.

After downloading the file simply run this command inside the directory where the file is located:

docker-compose up

This may take up to several minutes as all docker images need to be downloaded from docker servers.

Checking the setup

Hermes console should be up and running on port 8090. Simply head here.

Running a specific version

All hermes images can be found under these links: * hermes-management * hermes-frontend * hermes-consumers

If you want to run a specific hermes release simply add a given version to the image name inside the docker-compose file, for example:

image: allegro/hermes-management:hermes-[specific version tag]

Development

File docker/docker-compose.development.yml disables deployment of hermes frontend, management, and consumers.

We have to provide an environment (Kafka, ZooKeeper, Graphite, Schema Registry) with command executed in the project directory:

docker-compose -f docker/docker-compose.yml -f docker/docker-compose.development.yml up

To start hermes frontend, management and consumers we can use the following commands

./gradlew -p hermes-frontend run

./gradlew -p hermes-management run

./gradlew -p hermes-consumers run

or use Run/Debug Configurations in IntelliJ

Creating group and topic

Now you're ready to create a topic for publishing messages.

In Hermes messages are published on topics which are aggregated into groups. So, you'll need to create a group first, let's name it com.example.events.

• head to Hermes Console: link
• click the blue plus button
• enter group name: com.example.events
• all the other information is required, but just enter whatever for now

At this point, you should see your group on the group list. Now let's add new clicks topic to our group:

• click the group header (direct link to com.example.events group: link)
• click the blue plus button
• enter topic name: clicks
• enter some description
• change content type to JSON - we don't want to add AVRO schema yet for the sake of simplicity

Publishing and receiving messages

To receive messages that are published on topic you have to create a subscription. This is where you tell Hermes where to send messages published on a topic. You can have many subscriptions on a single topic (in particular - none).

So let's create a clicks-receiver subscription:

• click the topic header (direct link to com.example.events.clicks group: link)
• click the blue plus button
• enter subscription name: clicks-receiver
• set the endpoint to which messages will be sent, in this example we can use http://webhook.site/aa715639-e85d-43b4-9a29-ec46824021fe
• enter some description and contact data

Now it's time for a grand finale. Let's publish a message on our topic (note that default Hermes publishing port is 8080):

curl -v -d '{"id": 12345, "page": "main"}' http://10.10.10.10:8080/topics/com.example.events.clicks

< HTTP/1.1 201 Created
< Hermes-Message-Id: 66feaead-0685-491e-9c87-00f940ead2c9
< Content-Length: 0
< Date: Mon, 04 May 2015 02:18:23 GMT

(the first time you publish something you might see 408 Request Time-out status: a lot of machinery needs to warm up, just hit retry)

Congratulations! The message should be delivered to your service or visible via e.g. http://webhook.site/#!/aa715639-e85d-43b4-9a29-ec46824021fe/71377cf3-9076-4c06-b3ef-ec779170ce05/1.

Stopping the system

To stop the system run this command in the directory where the docker-compose file is located:

docker-compose stop

To restart it run:

docker-compose restart

Building your own docker image

You can build your own docker image for a specific module and later test it for example in docker-compose.yml. Simply run this command from a hermes project root directory:

docker build --tag [your tag name] -f ./docker/latest/[hermes module]/Dockerfile .

For example:

docker build --tag hermes-management-test -f ./docker/latest/management/Dockerfile .

The built image can be tested directly in docker-compose. You need to replace image name with your tag name in docker-compose.yml:

[...]
management:
    image: [your tag name]
    ports:
      - "8090:8090"
    depends_on:
      - zk
      - kafka
      - graphite
[...]

Docker files for specific hermes modules can be found in docker/latest directory.