catops 0.1.8

Highly trained cats for managing servers.

<h1 align="center" >CatOps</h1>

Highly trained cats for managing servers.


## What is CatOps

CatOps is a very simple NoOps framework for deploying your own ChatOps bot.

Commands you wish to add to your CatOps implementation are added to a `plugins`
folder in the same directory, and will then be automatically imported and callable
using the function name.

## Why CatOps

- NoOps.
- Deploy, rewrite, and redeploy FaaS easily with no worrying about setting up and managing servers.
- Only charged when CatOps is called.

- Codify common maintenance procedures.
- Perform high level actions without intimate low level knowledge.
- Prevent errors doing complicated but routine tasks.

- Unify documentation.
- CatOps can act as a unified go-to location for help, merging/pooling all documentation into one place.

- Transparency.
- Team members can see all actions taken by others in solving a problem. Organic learning.
- No 'go-to' person for certain maintenance tasks.
- Everyone aware of server changes. No-one surprised that the server is down if they see `/meow restart server` in the chat.
- Spread knowledge; everyone becomes equally capable of solving problems.
- Out of date help messages or documentation is more obvious to everyone.

- Context-aware suggestions, suggest actions and display help depending on context.
- Docs/procedures/etc are useful, but can be too much to read through, hard to find, not up to date.
- Reduce clutter when trying to figure out next actions.

- Reduce context switching.
- No need for bash, Linux, ssh or VPN to fix most server issues.
- No checking server logs.
- Easily accesible and readble output.

- Control access.
- Only gives necessary access, no unnecessary ssh-ing into production!

## Features

- Completely NoOps.
- Easily extensible.
- Pay per invocation.
- Provider agnostic.

## Quick Start

1. Install catops `pip install catops`
2. Run `meow install [--template] [--target-dir]`
3. Adjust the template according to your needs e.g. add Slack OAuth tokens, adjust service names etc.
4. Install serverless dependencies `npm install` in the template directory.
5. Run `serverless deploy`
6. Configure your Slack app (i.e. set Slash command/Bot endpoint URLs to appropriate URLs)

## Example

### Python handler

```python handler.py
import json
from six.moves.urllib.parse import parse_qs
import requests
import boto3
from catops import dispatch


def respond(event, context):
"""Call handler.main asynchronously and then return instant response."""
lambda_client = boto3.client('lambda')
response = {'statusCode':'200'}
# Call actual function asynchronously
lambda_client.invoke(
FunctionName='CatOps-dev-dispatcher',
InvocationType='Event',
Payload=json.dumps(event))
return response


def main(event, context):
"""Main lamda function logic, to be called asynchronously."""
params = parse_qs(event.get('body'))
payload = convert_dispatch(params)
username = params.get('user_name', ['catops'])[0]

# Post to Slack channel
response_url = params.get('response_url')
if type(response_url) is list:
response_url = response_url[0]
r = requests.post(response_url, data=json.dumps(payload))
if not r.ok:
print(r)
print(r.reason)
print(r.text)
return
```

### Example plugin

```python plugins/example.py
"""example.py - example plugin for ChatOps."""

def ping(argv, params):
"""Check is working."""
text = '@{} Meow!'.format(params.get('user_name', ['CatOps'])[0]),
return text
```

### Serverless configuration

```yaml serverless.yml
service: CatOps

package:
include:
- handler.py
- plugins/**

custom:
pythonRequirements:
slim: true

provider:
name: aws
stage: ${opt:stage, 'dev'}
runtime: python3.6
profile: serverless
iamRoleStatements:
- Effect: Allow
Action:
- lambda:InvokeFunction
- lambda:InvokeAsync
Resource: "*"

functions:
dispatcher:
handler: handler.main
respond:
handler: handler.respond
events:
- http:
path: ping
method: post

plugins:
- serverless-python-requirements
```

### Deploy and Test

```bash
serverless deploy
serverless invoke --function dispatcher --path /path/to/json/data --log
```

See [examples](https://github.com/BBOXX/CatOps/tree/master/examples) and [templates](https://github.com/BBOXX/CatOps/tree/master/catops/templates) for more.

## Installation

```bash
sudo apt-get install npm
sudo npm install -g serverless
npm install serverless-python-requirements
pip install catops
```

Install `serverless-python-requirements` in the same dir as `serverless.yml`.

## Limitations

- Passive rather than active; needs to be triggered (e.g. by Slack slash commands (could run it every command))
- Limitations of FaaS
- Max size (256MB for AWS Lambda)
- Execution time limit (5 minute for AWS Lambda)
- No state (recommend using a cloud-based database for state e.g. DynamoDB for AWS)
- No autocomplete inside of Slack.