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Deploy static content to AWS CDN for WaveMaker Apps

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The frontend code of any WaveMaker application can be configured to deploy onto a CDN. This improves the end-user experience of the WaveMaker application because of dramatic gains made in the page load times. In this document, you will learn how to setup the deployment of WaveMaker frontend artifacts to CDN. While the instructions here deal with AWS, similar steps can be followed to deploy onto CDNs provided by any other cloud infrastructure providers.

• Create an Amazon S3 bucket
• Configure Origin Access Identity
• Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution
• Build and Deploy static Content to S3

Create an Amazon S3 bucket

• Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon S3 console .

• Choose Create bucket, Next Enter Bucket Name, and Select the region for the bucket.

• In Bucket settings for Block Public Access, choose the Block Public Access settings that you want to apply to the bucket.

• Go to bucket properties, enable static website hosting.

• If the web application loaded in one domain and the frontend code in s3 loaded with a different CDN domain, then the end-user will receive error No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header which is present on the requested resource. So, to selectively allow cross-origin access to your Amazon S3 resources, add CORS rules in the bucket permission section. If website content requires CORS, then add rules in the bucket permission section. For more details, visit aws s3 cors.

CORS example
[
    {
        "AllowedHeaders": [
            "*"
        ],
        "AllowedMethods": [
            "GET",
            "POST",
            "HEAD"
        ],
        "AllowedOrigins": [
            "http://example.mydomain.com"
        ],
        "ExposeHeaders": [],
        "MaxAgeSeconds": 300000
    }
]

Configure Origin Access Identity

• An Origin Access Identity (OAI) is used for sharing private content via CloudFront. The OAI is a special CloudFront user and OAI has read permissions to the bucket. CloudFront will use the OAI to access the files in your bucket and serve them to end-users.
• When end-users access your Amazon S3 files through CloudFront, the CloudFront origin access identity gets the files on behalf of end-users. If end users request files directly by using Amazon S3 URLs, they're denied access. The origin access identity has permission to access files in your Amazon S3 bucket, but users don't. For more details visit private content restriction in s3
• Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the CloudFront console, at security section select origin access identity and create Origin Access Identity by providing comment.

Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution

• Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the CloudFront console, select Create Distribution

• On the first page of the Create Distribution Wizard, in the Web section, choose Get Started.

• At Origin Domain Name select previously created S3 Bucket, if you want to store content in any specific directory provide an origin path.

• select restrict buckets access as yes and select previously created existing Identity.

• At Grant Read Permissions on Bucket select yes for update bucket policy ,it will provide read permission to the origin access identity when you create the distribution.

• Provide Cache behavior configuration details

• At distribution settings select Default CloudFront certificate or import custom SSL certificate , then click on create distribution by providing required values for creation.

• Wait for few minutes to create distribution and after creating distribution note down the domain name of CloudFront distribution.

Build and Deploy static Content to S3

• Check Build Process Maven Build Process to Support CDN Deploy

mvn clean install -Pdeployment -Dcdn-url=https://mydomain.cloudfront.net/my_app>/1234/

• The above command generates two deployable artifacts: ui-artifacts.zip, project.war. Both these files can be found in the target folder.

• Use the following commands to unzip and upload to S3.

• To unzip the file and store contents in a specific folder

unzip ui-artifacts.zip -d <my-static-content-folder>

• Upload files to AWS S3 bucket

aws s3 sync <my-static-content-folder>/ S3_BUCKET