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Factorial GmbH profile image Stephan Maximilian Huber
Stephan Maximilian Huber for Factorial GmbH

Posted on • Originally published at docs.phab.io

What's new in phabalicious 3.8?

#phab #phabalicious #devops

What has changed?

PHP 7.3 required

Phabalicious requires now PHP version 7.3. It should work with newer versions, including 8.1

Better integration with 1Password cli/ connect

  • Support for version 2 of the cli
  • added new script callback get_file_from_1password which will retrieve an encrypted file from 1password, decrypt it and store it somewhere, suitable when scaffolding.

Encryption and decryption

Phab supports now encryption and decryption of files and strings. It uses defuse/php-encryption,
a widely used library for encryption under the hood. You can encrypt files in a script with

secrets:
  name-of-secret:
    question: What is the password?

scripts:
  encrypt:
    - encrypt_files(path/to/files/or/folders/to/encrypt/*.ext, path/to/folder/to/store/encrypted/files, name-of-secret)
  decrypt:
    - decrypt_files(path/to/files/or/folders/to/decrypt/*.enc, path/to/folder/to/store/decrypted/files, name-of-secret)
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The scaffolder has a new callback called decrypt_assets which works the same as copy_assets but with an additional
decryption step

scaffold:
  - decrypt_assets(targetFolder, dataKey, secretName, twigExtension)
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You can also use decrypt() and encrypt() in your scaffold templates using the provided twig-functions:

test.yml

data:
  my_secret_data: "{{ decrypt(my_secret_data, 'name-of-secret') }}"
  encrypted: "{{ encrypt("Hello world", 'name-of-secret') }}"
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New command install:from-sql-file

The command install:from and the new command install:from-sql-file get reworked to prevent double-work and to
streamline the process. You can now install the app from an existing sql-file, which translates into an optimized
flow of

phab -cmy-host-config install
phab -cmy-host-config restore:sql-from-file sql.gz
phab -cmy-host-config reset
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Instead run

phab -cmy-host-config install:from-sql-file sql.gz
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Refactoring of data-handling

Phab now handles data differently, by storing from which file or url a piece of data was loaded. This enables phab to
use relative includes, even for remote configurations. Now you can do things like

base.yml

hosts:
  test:
    foo: Hello world
    bar: Hello from base.yml
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fabfile.yml:

inheritsFrom:
  - ./base.yml

needs:
  - local

hosts:
  test:
    foo: Hello mars
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Running output will show the resolved inheritances:

❯ phab38 -ctest output --what host


Output of host-configuration `test`
===================================

  test:
    foo: 'Hello mars'
    bar: 'Hello from base.yml'
    needs:
      - local
      - script
    type: dev
    .
    .
    .
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This enhances also the introspection possibilities:

The about command got a -v flag

The about command has another trick up its sleeve now. When inheriting configurations from multiple files, it can now
display the exact location from which a particular parameter is being picked. Thus, finding out if a value is coming from an inherited file from a remote server or some sensible defaults is at your fingertip.

Let's have a look at an example to see this in action. The command displays not only the active value for a particular
key but also the location from which it is picked up.

In our case the ouput of phab -ctest about will show the inheritance very in the second column:

❯ phab about -v -ctest

Configuration of test
=====================

+-----------------------------+-------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------+
| Key                         | Value                               | Inherited from                                    |
+-----------------------------+-------------------------------------+---------------------------------------------------+
|   foo                       | Hello mars                          | /Users/stephan/Desktop/phab-38-blog/.fabfile.yaml |
|   bar                       | Hello from base.yml                 | /Users/stephan/Desktop/phab-38-blog/base.yml      |
|   needs                     |                                     | /Users/stephan/Desktop/phab-38-blog/.fabfile.yaml |
|     needs.0                 | local                               | /Users/stephan/Desktop/phab-38-blog/.fabfile.yaml |
|     needs.1                 | script                              | /Users/stephan/Desktop/phab-38-blog/.fabfile.yaml |
|   type                      | dev                                 | host defaults                                     |
.
.
.
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New command find:property

Phab 3.8 contains a new command named find:property which provides a visual prompt where the user can start typing the
name of a property they are interested in. Phab supports you by offering properties via autocomplete. As an alternative
you can hit enter to get a list of suggestions. After you found the property you are interested in, hit return, and phab
will display the actual value of that property, its ancestors and from where it got read.

Here's a short walkthrough using the files and their config from above.

docs.phab.io

Enhancements to the database command

There's a new subcommand available db:query where you can run a query against the database of a given configuration
without starting a database-shell and run the query manually.

phab -cmy-host-config db:query "show tables"
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It will try to get the database credentials from the configuration and apply them. This command is only implemented for
mysql/mariadb for now.

New command restic

Phab 3.7 got support for offsite backups via restic. But it was still a bit cumbersome to interact with the restic
repository for a given configuration using restic alone. That's why phab now has the restic command. It is applying the
configuration and options from the fabfile and you can concentrate on the commands you want to pass to restic. Some
examples:

phab -cmy-host-config restic snapshots
phab -cmy-host-config restic -- snapshots --host-name my-config
phab -cmy-host-config restic -- forget --keep-daily=14 --keep-weekly=4 --keep-monthly=6 --group-by host --prune
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Experimental integration with ddev

ddev is a superb tool for managing local development environments and provides similar features as phabalicious. As it
takes a lot of time to maintain a local development stack (like multibasebox) we thought it might make more sense to
embrace existing open-source tools.

As ddev is also using docker and docker-compose under the hood it was very unproblematic to integrate ddev with phabalicious.
Phab will read the ddev configuration from .ddev/config.yaml and provide it under the global property ddev. So it's
very easy to provide a phab configuration for your local ddev instance. Instead of copy-pasting the boilerplate into
every project we store it on a central place and inherit from it in the fabfile:

Store this file in a central place, e.g. in your user-folder or on a remote-server. For demonstration purposes we store
this in the same folder as the fabfile

the ddev.yml-file:

requires: 3.8.0

dockerHosts:
  ddev:
    rootFolder: .
    runLocally: true


hosts:
  ddev:
    additionalNeeds:
      - ddev
    info:
      description: Local ddev instance
      publicUrls:
        - "https://%settings.ddev.name%.ddev.site"
      category:
        id: 01-local
        label: Local development
    executables:
      drush: /var/www/html/vendor/bin/drush

    shellProvider: docker-exec
    composerRootFolder: /var/www/html
    gitRootFolder: /var/www/html
    rootFolder: /var/www/html/web
    backupFolder: /var/www/backups
    docker:
      configuration: ddev
      name: ddev-%settings.ddev.name%-web
      projectFolder: .
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the actual .fabfile.yml:

inheritsFrom:
  - ./ddev.yml

hosts:
  ddev:
    # its a drupal installation, so add the drupal-specfic stuff
    adminPass: admin
    replaceSettingsFile: false
    alterSettingsFile: false
    executables:
      drush: /var/www/html/vendor/bin/drush
    needs:
      - git
      - docker
      - drush
      - files
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running phab list:hosts will show sth like this for your ddev-project:

❯ phab list:hosts -v

Available configurations for your project
=========================================

Local development
-----------------

 ‣ ddev
   Local ddev instance
   → https://my-ddev-site.ddev.site
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You can run any command against the ddev site as usual. For controlling app lifetime please use ddev, e.g. ddev start
or ddev stop

New run contexts for yarn, npm and others

The configs for yarn, npm, composer and laravel changed. The composite property name like yarnBuildCommand is
deprecated, please move the config under a section named yarn. This allows us to add more options for the respective
commands by keeping a structure. Phab will support the old property-names until the next major release, for now you'll
get a friendly reminder.

One of the reasons for this change is the extension of the runContext, which got renamed into context which will adapt
the existing functionality of the script execution contexts. Build commands can now be multiline, but then please
provide the executable-name by yourself:

Old:

hosts:
  test:
    yarnBuildCommand: build:production
    yarnRunContext: docker-host
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New:

hosts:
  test:
    yarn:
      buildCommand:
        - yarn build:production
        - yarn build:assets
      context: docker-image
      image: node:16
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There are two new contexts available which pigypack on the existing functionality of script execution contexts:

  • docker-image will execute the yarn build in a docker image (see script execution contexts for configuration options)
  • docker-image-on-docker-host same as above, but it will be executed on the same instance where docker-commands are executed, usually where your dockerConfig points to.

Smaller enhancements

  • Passwords are now obfuscated in phabs output.
  • Update-check is now using a maintained [php
  • library](https://github.com/consolidation/self-update) and works more reliably. Please that the name of the option for getting a beta-version changed too.
  • When importing a sql-dump phab freezes the app, and unfreezes it afterwards. For drupal applications the site will be put in maintenance mode and back.

Switch to conventional commits and semi-automated releases

We switched to the conventional commits convention and introduced standard-release to help us creating proper releases.

Where to get it

See the documentation for installation

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