Deployment in a modern dev environment

[AxlF]

Hey,

 

i would like to share my feature request with you.

 

As we use version control (like git or bitbucket) to track changes in our templates and the whmcs installation in general we ran into a problem on every deploy.

 

We use envoyer (envoyer.io) as our deployment tool of choice - but i think it's fairly common how envoyer deploys the app on the server.

 

All deploys going into a 'releases' directory with a timestamp. Then the most recent version is symlinked to a 'current' folder, where the public root of the webserver points to. This let us do instant rollbacks on corrupt deploys.

 

All fine so far.

 

Our problem is the WHMCS license reissue mechanism. In our license information there is a field called "valid directory", which points to the directory of the whmcs installation. It's automatically propagated during the reissue process.

But it points to the 'releases' directory, which changes on every deploy. Thus we need to manually reissue the license after every deploy - which means we must log in the client area, search the license and click the green "reissue license" button. This process becomes cumbersome very soon, in a otherwise fully automated environment.

 

We think the solution is very simple

 

a) let us manually propagate the "valid directory" option. So we could point to the "current" directory, which is valid after every deploy.

 

b) let us trigger the license reissue process via API. We were able to reissue the license automatically after every deploy.

 

 

The deployment process feels very good to us. It's the first time, we don't have a bad feeling upgrading our WHMCS installation. No fear of loosing some of our modifications - all is version controlled and could be instantly rolled back. We would like to keep this process.

 

The only caveat is the license issue.

 

Please vote for that feature if you feel the same way:

 

https://requests.whmcs.com/topic/deployment-trigger-license-reissue-process-via-api

 

thank you

[yggdrasil]

Well, this is why a developer license exists, there you would not need to re-issue that license in the first place.

 

And shouldn't your dev deployment match the production site anyway? So you could rollback from the developer installation to your production server. You get a free developer license with WHMCS as long as its not public accessible (internally just for development or testing)

 

If this does not work for you, your problem seems rather easy to solve. Did you considered renaming the folder automatically or with some other job? Since you seem to have automated some of your deployment this seems like just one more step in your process or you could setup different machines or even a virtual system and keep the same folder structure for both.

[AxlF]

Sure, for development, a development license would be a good fit.

 

But this won't solve the problem for deploying from a VCS on a production system, using Tools like Envoyer. As written in my original post, we use this approach for many of our customers sites. We are searching a way for easily integrating the WHMCS deploys in this workflow. We don't want to setup a different workflow, only for WHMCS. Why couldn't we not stick with what works for us for many projects?

 

The solution is very easy, at the WHMCS Company side, too... There exists an API. The don't need to write one from the ground.

What are the reasons to NOT let us programmatically trigger the license reissue process?

[WHMCS John]

Hi,

Our reseller program offers the ability to manage licences in your account via an API, so may I suggest joining our reseller program would achieve what you're asking here: http://www.whmcs.com/resellers/