Provide ability to run Polaris as a service

[affieuk]

Please provide the ability to run Polaris as a service

[TylerLeonhardt]

You mean like a hosted solution? Can you go into a little bit more detail?

[affieuk]

So I didn't went to mention a Windows service, but that is the idea, obviously Polaris is xplat, so the code will need to cater for a Linux service also. I was thinking that there would be some binary and then we can have a function that wraps New-Service. Maybe some sort of config file that contains the webroutes, and if the user is expected load or wanted to take advantage of a 'proper' web server then they can reverse proxy behind IIS, Apache, NGINX.

Since we already have a dll, can't it be put behind rundll32?

I'm envisaging a Windows API box, that will accept http / rest calls from non Windows boxes, it can take it whatever requests and then assuming the Windows box is domain joined can execute anything PowerShell can.

[RamblingCookieMonster]

Hiyo!

First off, awesome idea, in the sense that simplifying / illustrating a tool as it would actually run in a production environment is hugely helpful.

Random-person-completely-unrelated-to-this-project's opinion: It might make more sense to document some examples of how you might run this as a service in different environments (e.g. nssm in Windows, among other options)

Why? Boiled down, there are so many ways to do this, and even if you pick one for a particular environment, you won't know how it's delivered (config mgmt? containers/schedulers? ad hoc command on a single server? something else?)

If we document some common example(s) for common operating environments, folks could use or adapt these to whatever systems they're using.

Cheers!

[TylerLeonhardt]

Totally agree! Thanks for the feedback folks

[affieuk]

Here is what I'm currently doing:

Polaris Script Path: C:\Scripts\Polaris.ps1

Import-Module C:\Polaris\Polaris.psm1
New-WebRoute -Path "/helloworld" -Method "GET" -ScriptBlock {
    $response.Send('Hello World');
}
Start-Polaris

# Hack to keep script running
Read-Host

NSSM Script

function Install-Service {
    Param(
        [string]$nssmPath = '.',
        [string]$Name,
        [string]$Description,
        [string]$Executable,
        [string]$Arguments
    )

    $nssm = Join-Path -Path $nssmPath -ChildPath 'nssm.exe'
    & $nssm install $name $executable $arguments
    $null = & $nssm set $name Description $description
    Start-Service $name
}

Install-Service -Name Polaris -Description 'PowerShell HTTP API Service' -Executable pwsh.exe -Arguments '-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command C:\Scripts\Polaris.ps1'

Test

Invoke-RestMethod -Uri http://localhost:8080/helloworld -Method GET

[awickham10]

I'm not sure this method of doing Read-Host works anymore. The web server doesn't appear to respond to requests when using that now (at least for me). I was able to get this working by adding -NoExit to my NSSM arguments.

[Tiberriver256]

@awickham10 - The Read-Host would block the thread yes. Add this instead and it should work for you:

while ($Polaris.Listener.IsListening) {
   Wait-Event callbackeventbridge.callbackcomplete
}

[awickham10]

That works great - thank you!