ANNOUNCE: TclCloud version 1.0
Patrick Dunnigan
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Description
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TclCloud is an opensource tcl interface to the Amazon AWS webservices
api that enabled cloud automation of most AWS products and operations.
Example use cases include the following:
- starting and stopping EC2 instances
- attaching EBS volumes
- creating and interfacing with SimpleDB and RDS instances
- managing EC2 Autoscale and Load Balancer configurations
- sending Simple Email Service messages
- creating, submitting and monitoring Elastic Map Reduce (Hadoop)
jobs
- configuring VPC networks
- and so on ...
For more information on the Amazon AWS cloud products, see:
http://aws.amazon.com/products/
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Repository and Download
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https://github.com/cloudsidekick/tclcloud
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Bug and Feature Requests
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https://github.com/cloudsidekick/tclcloud/issues
General questions can be posted to comp.lang.tcl
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How does it work?
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All of the Amazon Web Services features are managed through their APIs
by connecting to "endpoints" and issuing either REST or SOAP web
service calls. Most programming language SDKs provide an abstraction
layer to these APIs. TclCloud opens up the AWS API to the TCL
developer with minimal abstraction and does not require a new release
to support new AWS features to existing products (which happens quite
frequently).
Responses from the AWS endpoint are returned in pure xml format which
are easily parsed using tdom.
For more information on the AWS API documentation, see:
http://aws.amazon.com/documentation/
To try out TclCloud you must have an Amazon AWS account with an API
access key and secret key.
Note: TclCloud was developed and tested on tcl 8.6 on linux. I plan to
support tcl 8.5 with TclOO and test on Windows.
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Installation
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Requirements - tcl 8.6 on linux, tcllib, TclCurl
Download the TclCloud from the Download button from the Git repository
above. Unzip the contents into the lib/tclcloud directory in your tcl
home directory.
Make sure you have tcllib and TclCurl installed too.
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Usage
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To create a new connection object, substitute your AWS provided access
key and secret key. The connection new object will not attempt to
create a connection to AWS, it simply creates the connection object
for use.
::tclcloud::connection new <aws access key> <aws secret key>
aws access key - the AWS provided access key
aws secret key - the AWS provided secret key
Example:
set awsconn [::tclcloud::connection new MYACCESSKEYKJREKJ
MYSECRETKEYLKJDLLKJSDDKJF]
To send a request to the AWS endpoint:
<AWS connection object> call_aws <product> <region> <action>
<parameters> <api version>
product - the AWS product to manage, currently one of the following
values: ec2 emr as rds sqs ses cw elb vpc iam ebs
ec2 - EC2
emr - Elastic MapReduce
as - AutoScale
rds - Relational Database Service
sqs - Simple Queue Service
ses - Simple Email Service
cw - CloudWatch
elb - Elastic Load Balancer
vpc - Virtual Private Cloud
iam - Identity and Access Management
ebs - Elastic Beanstalk
sns - Simple Notification Service
cfn - Cloudformation
region - the AWS region to interact with. This is product specific,
see the following link for which regions apply to what products.
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/general/latest/gr/index.html
Currently one of the following values: us-east-1, us-west-1, eu-
west-1, ap-southeast-1, ap-northeast-1 or leave blank for the default
(typically us-east-1)
action - this will correspond with the specific product API operation
or action.
Examples include:
AssociateAddress
CreateImage
GetAttributes
etc.
parameter - key / value pairs that will be passed to the API in a tcl
list format.
api version - the api version for the specific product API. Leave
blank for the default.
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TODO
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- add support for S3, Cloudfront, Route53, Import/Export
- certify tcl 8.5, Windows and Mac
- incorporate XML results parser using tdom, to list and json
- more sample code
- add support for the Rackspace, vSphere, OpSource, etc. APIs
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Samples
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To launch an Ubuntu instance, default region and api version:
package require tclcloud
set awsconn [::tclcloud::connection new MYACCESSKEYKJREKJ
MYSECRETKEYLKJDLLKJSDDKJF4]
set return_value [$awsconn call_aws ec2 {} RunInstances {ImageId
ami-1aad5273 MinCount 1 MaxCount 1 KeyName CentiviaKey SecurityGroup.1
{MySQL intranet} InstanceType t1.micro Placement.AvailabilityZone us-
east-1d} {}]
puts $return_value
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<RunInstancesResponse xmlns="http://ec2.amazonaws.com/doc/2011-05-15/
">
<requestId>40bfb94e-ecb8-4f49-b6ee-24b37f94ba04</requestId>
<reservationId>r-0d3b3061</reservationId>
<ownerId>001825975926</ownerId>
<groupSet>
<item>
<groupId>sg-5aabe433</groupId>
<groupName>MySQL intranet</groupName>
</item>
</groupSet>
<instancesSet>
<item>
<instanceId>i-912f2bff</instanceId>
<imageId>ami-1aad5273</imageId>
<instanceState>
<code>0</code>
<name>pending</name>
</instanceState>
<privateDnsName/>
<dnsName/>
<reason/>
<keyName>CentiviaKey</keyName>
<amiLaunchIndex>0</amiLaunchIndex>
<productCodes/>
<instanceType>t1.micro</instanceType>
<launchTime>2011-07-01T03:40:13.000Z</launchTime>
<placement>
<availabilityZone>us-east-1d</availabilityZone>
<groupName/>
<tenancy>default</tenancy>
</placement>
<kernelId>aki-427d952b</kernelId>
<monitoring>
<state>disabled</state>
</monitoring>
<groupSet>
<item>
<groupId>sg-5aabe433</groupId>
<groupName>MySQL intranet</groupName>
</item>
</groupSet>
<stateReason>
<code>pending</code>
<message>pending</message>
</stateReason>
<rootDeviceType>ebs</rootDeviceType>
<rootDeviceName>/dev/sda1</rootDeviceName>
<blockDeviceMapping/>
<virtualizationType>paravirtual</virtualizationType>
<clientToken/>
<hypervisor>xen</hypervisor>
</item>
</instancesSet>
</RunInstancesResponse>
To get a list of my machine images, default region and api version:
package require tclcloud
set awsconn [::tclcloud::connection new MYACCESSKEYKJREKJ
MYSECRETKEYLKJDLLKJSDDKJF]
set return_value [$awsconn call_aws ec2 {} DescribeImages {Owner.1
self} {}]
puts $return_value
<DescribeImagesResponse xmlns="http://ec2.amazonaws.com/doc/2011-05-15/
">
<requestId>c10b0d57-964c-452e-a2ca-77aa8c49a65c</requestId>
<imagesSet>
<item>
<imageId>ami-3012e159</imageId>
<imageLocation>001825975926/Windows IIS SQL Server Small</
imageLocation>
<imageState>available</imageState>
<imageOwnerId>001825975926</imageOwnerId>
<isPublic>false</isPublic>
<architecture>x86_64</architecture>
<imageType>machine</imageType>
<platform>windows</platform>
<name>Windows IIS SQL Server Small</name>
<description>Windows IIS SQL Server Small</description>
<rootDeviceType>ebs</rootDeviceType>
<rootDeviceName>/dev/sda1</rootDeviceName>
<blockDeviceMapping>
<item>
<deviceName>/dev/sda1</deviceName>
<ebs>
<snapshotId>snap-345e8058</snapshotId>
<volumeSize>30</volumeSize>
<deleteOnTermination>true</
deleteOnTermination>
</ebs>
</item>
</blockDeviceMapping>
<virtualizationType>hvm</virtualizationType>
<tagSet>
<item>
<key>Name</key>
<value>Windows 2008 64 Dev Instance</value>
</item>
</tagSet>
<hypervisor>xen</hypervisor>
</item>
<item>
<imageId>ami-40659629</imageId>
<imageLocation>001825975926/Informix Linux Dev</
imageLocation>
<imageState>available</imageState>
<imageOwnerId>001825975926</imageOwnerId>
<isPublic>false</isPublic>
<architecture>i386</architecture>
<imageType>machine</imageType>
<name>Informix Linux Dev</name>
<description>Informix Linux Dev</description>
<rootDeviceType>ebs</rootDeviceType>
<rootDeviceName>/dev/sda1</rootDeviceName>
<blockDeviceMapping>
<item>
<deviceName>/dev/sda1</deviceName>
<ebs>
<snapshotId>snap-182ef074</snapshotId>
<volumeSize>10</volumeSize>
<deleteOnTermination>true</
deleteOnTermination>
</ebs>
</item>
</blockDeviceMapping>
<virtualizationType>paravirtual</virtualizationType>
<tagSet>
<item>
<key>Name</key>
<value>Linux Informix</value>
</item>
</tagSet>
<hypervisor>xen</hypervisor>
</item>
<item>
</imagesSet>
</DescribeImagesResponse>
Gerald W. Lester
Impressive -- please consider giving a paper at the Tcl/Tk conference this
October.
> ------------------------------------------
> TODO
> ------------------------------------------
> - incorporate XML results parser using tdom, to list and json
May I strongly suggest going to a dictionary format instead of a pure list.
It fits very nicely with XML as Amazon uses it. See
http://core.tcl.tk/tclws for an example of representing the XML using
dictionaries.
--
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Gerald W. Lester, President, KNG Consulting LLC |
| Email: Gerald...@kng-consulting.net |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Donal K. Fellows
wrote:
> I am please to announce the inaugural version of TclCloud, v1.0.
Cool. I've transcribed (and formatted) your announcement onto the Wiki
at http://wiki.tcl.tk/28507 but if I've made any errors, please
correct them.
Donal.