Services

Services are independent processes that the main application depends on. These may be local or remote based on the distributed application files.

Note: Commoners currently supports .js, .ts, .py, and .exe services.

To declare a service, you simply add the source file path to the commoners.config.js file:

export default {
    services: {
        test: './services/test/index.ts'
    },
}

Before using a service, it's good practice to:

1. Check for the existence of the service.
2. Instantiate the appropriate URL from the commoners global object.

    const { SERVICES } = commoners
    if ('test' in SERVICES) {
        const url = new URL(SERVICES.test.url)
        // ....
    }

If your service will be accessible from a particular URL, you'll want to make sure to instantiate your server using the HOST and PORT environment variables:

import http from 'node:http';
const host = process.env.HOST
const port = process.env.PORT
http.createServer((req, res) => { /* ... */ }).listen(port)

Using Services in Production

Service configurations may be different between development and production.

For instance, .py services can be packaged into an .exe file using pyinstaller.

Python

The following configuration will allow you to include the --onedir bundle from PyInstaller in your desktop builds:

const pythonService = {
    name: 'python-service',
    src: 'src/main.py',
    outDir: 'dist/pyinstaller',
}

export default {
    // ...
    src: pythonService.src,
    build: `python -m PyInstaller --name ${pythonService.name} --onedir --clean ${pythonService.src} --distpath ${pythonService.outDir}`,
     publish: {
        src: pythonService.name, // The relative executable location in the base directory
        base: `${pythonService.outDir}/${pythonService.name}`, // The base directory to copy
    }
}

Note: You must refrain from using the same --name argument as your --distpath final directory, as PyInstaller uses the [distpath]/../[name] directory to store temporary files.

You can also use the included helper function to declare Python services:

import { services } from '@commoners/solidarity'

const pythonService = {
    name: 'python-service',
    src: 'src/main.py'
}

export default {
    // ...
    services: services.python.services([ pythonService ])
}