Skip to content

3. Quick guide⚓︎

This section introduces you to a development sandbox called the xApp Dev Environment, which can be easily deployed on an existing dRAX installation, in order to gain familiarity with the capabilities of our xApp Framework. We have basically created a Hello-World example inside of the xApp Core using the xApp Library, built a Docker image and prepared a remotely available Helm Chart.

3.1 Deploy the xApp Dev Environment⚓︎

The xApp Dev Environment can be easily deployed in a user friendly way via the dRAX Dashboard. Open the dRAX Dashboard, and using the left hand side tabs navigate to: New Deployment -> xApp Deployment.

In the newly opened form, from the Method drop-down menu, select Deploy xApp Development Environment. Next, fill in the metadata fields, such as your xApps name, organization team, etc. The Version field indicates which version of the xApp Dev Environment to use. Leave this at “latest”, as this automatically picks the latest stable version of the xApp Dev Environment for your version of dRAX. Finally, the xApp Dev Environment also has the possibility to be accessed via ssh from remote. Therefore, you have to set the ssh password which will be used in the Developer SSH Password field.

Note: Enter a password between 7 to 15 characters which contains at least one numeric digit and a special character. Click the Submit button to deploy the xApp Dev Environment.

Accessing the xApp Dev Environment

Once you deploy the xApp Dev Env, you can check if all its pods are deployed. The xApp pods have a naming convention based on the metadata you provided: <organization>-<team>-<xapp_name>-<version>

This can be used to filter the pods in the kubectl command:

kubectl get pods

Once all the pods are in running state, you can access the xApp Dev Environment by using the following command:

You can now access the xApp Dev Environment by going into the container in Kubernetes. The xApp pods have a naming convention based on the metadata you provided: <organization>-<team>-<xapp_name>-<version>

When the xApp is deployed you will have 2 pods in Kubernetes:

  • <organization>-<team>-<xapp_name>-<version>
  • <organization>-<team>-<xapp_name>-<version>-xapp-redis

The xApp Core is located under the <organization>-<team>-<xapp_name>-<version> pod, so to access the development environment you can:

kubectl exec -it <pod_name> -- /bin/bash

3.2 Start the xApp in the development environment⚓︎

Finally you can start your xApp by issuing the following command inside the container:

python3 xapp_main.py

3.3 Edit the xApp⚓︎

The developer is free to edit the xapp_main.py and create other .py files. You can stop the currently running xapp_main.py, edit the files and restart the xApp again. This allows you to work in a sandbox environment, all fully integrated into dRAX, and focus only on the functionality you bring.

3.4 How to uninstall the xApp⚓︎

You can simply delete the xApp Dev Environment by clicking the Uninstall button on the xApp Overview page on the dRAX Dashboard. Navigate to xApp Management -> Overview.

NOTE: Please note that any changes will be lost once the sandbox deployment is removed. Therefore it is important to backup your work before deleting the xApp Dev Environment. In the xApp Dev Environment container, we have also pre-installed git, so you are free to use it to backup your code to a remote Git repository. In the following section we will explore how to move from the xApp Dev Environment to a productized xApp.

Back to top