Created on 2020-06-25 11:32
Published on 2020-06-25 11:39
IronWorker
Introduction to the tool with its main features:
Software developers understand everybody's or business's requirements and provide them with unique and reliable applications, and they work so hard to make things easier for everyone. The applications like iron.io are among the few, which makes it easy for the developers. Iron.io is an application that provides the integration with Docker to take the development and deployment of modern age applications on another level. There are some similar applications, but there are few features that make the ironworker special and favorite.
IronWorker enables the developer with three fundamental aspects of application development. These foundations aspects provide upon demand tasks processing and streamlined orchestration support while running in an environment that is multi-language containerized. Those three foundation aspects are:
1. Asynchronous processing
2. Isolation for code and dependencies
3. Concurrently running the tasks at scale.
Ironworker allows developers to be working on the Docker images for different projects simultaneously. In a way that best suits each project, Ironworker provides predefined Docker images that include most of the significant languages and OS packages. Also, custom images and any of the DockerHub images. Iron.io believes in developer empowerment. Because of that, they are very considerate of the developers' needs and continuously move towards making the necessary changes to make the ideal tools for developers. For example, in 2015, to improve quality and streamline the development process, the iron.io came up with a new ironworker workflow that enabled developers to test their worker code on the local machine with the same environment while running on the ironworker cloud. Iron.io gives one of a kind experience for beginners, and it is incredibly flexible for the users with
Features:
1. Pictures
In any consumer application pictures play an important role; it also increases engagement and makes the application attractive and eye-catching. It doesn't matter what kind of pictures you are using, and it always requires image processing for resizing, watermarks, thumbnails, and sharpening. For image-processing, Ironworker provides with many libraries like ImageMagick, LibGD, and GraphicsMagick. These packages have enormous capabilities, and yet they are effortless to use.
2. Extracting Data:
The web is loaded with tremendous amounts of data. Everything is available, whether its real estate, social, economic, or some transactions and news. The data resides on the web, ready to be imported and sorted to make use of to gain benefits. However, the process of extracting data from the web must be continuous. To keep on doing that, it requires loads of processes and jobs to run concurrently. To achieve this, IronWorker is equipped with several code libraries such as PhantomJS, Nutch, CasperJS, and Nokogiri. All of these run smoothly on IronWorker.
3. Sending Push Notifications
Push notification is a message that is sent from the central server to the end-user. Think of it as sending a message from publishers to subscribers. These notifications are usually to be sent in batches. Like if you want to let your customers know about the sale or new products. The products and the percentage of the sale are different in the different regions of the world. IronWorker has come with a better architecture that is significantly better than the traditional one, and it is powered by APNS and GCM being used in parallel.
Some of the additional features are:
· The environment, which is containerized.
· Highly scalable processing
· Flexibility in scheduling
· Completely reliable and secure
· configuration and Monitoring with more in-depth detail,
· Supports multiple languages.
· Fast and effective customer support
How to Download/Setup:
1. You must have Docker installed on your system. If you already have it on your machine, proceed to the next step, otherwise install Docker.
2. You should install the Iron CLI tool, it’s not necessary to have this tool, but it makes some of the things more accessible.
3. Setup your iron.io credentials.
Advantages vs. Disadvantages:
Pros
· A scalable and straightforward, intuitive interface, provides the ability to see what is being contained in each request.
· API is Straightforward.
· The formatting of the logs display is loveable.
· Easy navigation
· If your local environment is the same as your production environment, the ability of ironworkers to get loaded using the Docker containers decreases the release time exponentially and makes testing easier.
· Multiple portfolio management speeds up development and deployment.
· Flexibility when designing the deployment cycle for multiple levels of architecture.
· Auditing and find the areas of improvement are made accessible due to the brief metrics.
· Analysis for each and everything is provided in a single panel window SQS
· Queue sharing options with zero compromise on the security as it has authentication
· Support for Native PHP, the scheduled jobs run on regular times; these two are desirable advantages.
· The perfect integration between other products of iron.io with Ironworker is a plus.
Cons
· There are two extremes when it comes to the pricing, the basic have limited features, and the standard one's price gets excessively high. There isn’t a middle ground available.
· There is no search function available in the application; you have to hover over hundreds of logs to find the one you are looking for. Also, you can only get seven-day' worth of logs.
· There are moments when the system gets down for no apparent reason. The timer of the worker keeps on counting even after the job is succeeded; you have to stop it by refreshing the page.
· The application documentation needs an upgrade, as each time when you want to launch a worker in a new environment, you need to talk to the iron support team.
· The setup wizard is not very user friendly, and API configuration, which is REST-based, is complicated. The application is not very user friendly in this regard.
· Sometimes jobs stall/stuck in the queue and need to be pushed manually.
· Ironworker is not capable of pausing the scheduled task(s) temporarily.
· The capability of sorting or filtering scheduled tasks is not there, although it should be.
· Messages that are waiting in the queue, there isn't any way for you to see them.