Overview

Peek Platforms primary goal is to manage, run and provide services to, hundreds of small units of code. We call these units of code, plugins.

These plugins build upon each others functionality to provide highly maintainable, testable and enterprise grade environment.

Plugins can publish APIs for other plugins to use, and one plugin can run across all services in the platform if it chooses.

The Peek Platform provides low level services, such as data transport, database access, web server, etc. It effectively just bootstraps plugins.

With the Peek Platform up and running, plugins can be added and updated by dropping zip files onto the peek admin web page. The platform then propagates the new plugin, loads and runs it.

Higher level functionality is added by creating plugins.

Architecture

The platform is distributed across several services, these services can be run all on one server, or distributed across different hardware and split across firewalls.

Peek supports distribution across multiple servers and network segregation.

For example, if you want to provide a means of integrating with external, less secure systems, you can place a “Peek Agent Service” in a DMZ to interface with the less secure networks. The Peek Agent will talk upstream to the Peek Server.

The following diagram describes the architecture of the platform and the services it provides.

../_images/PlatformArchitecture.png

Services

This section describes the services which peek platform provides.

We use the term “service” with the meaning “the action of helping or doing work for someone”. Each service is it’s own entity which plugins can choose to run code on.

The exception is the “storage” service. The database can be accessed from the worker and server services. The database upgrade scripts are run from the “server” service. You could consider the database server to be the storage service.

Each service has it’s logical place with in the architecture. (See the architecture diagram above)

The services are as follows:

Peek Platform Services
Service Language Description
server python The center of the Peek Platform, ideal for central logic.
storage python This refers to support for persisting and retrieving database data.
client python The client service handles requests from ‘desktop’ and ‘mobile’.
agent python The agent is a satellite service, integrating with external systems.
worker python The worker service provides parallel processing for computational intensive tasks
admin typescript A web based admin interface for the peek platform
mobile typescript The user interface for mobile devices.
desktop typescript The user interface for desktops

Note

Where we refer to “Angular” this means Angular version 2+. Angular1 is known as “AngularJS”

Server Service

The Peek Server Service is the central / main / core server in the peek architecture. This is the ideal place for plugins to integrate with each other.

All other python services talk directly to this service, and only this service.

The main coordinating logic of the plugins should run on this service.

Storage Service

The storage service is provided by a SQLAlchemy database library, supporting anywhere from low level database API access to working with the database using a high level ORM.

Database schema versioning is handled by Alembic, allowing plugins to automatically update their database schemas, or patch data as required.

The database access is available on the Peek Worker and Peek Server services.

Client Service

The Client service was introduced to handle all requests from desktop, mobile and web apps. Reducing the load on the Peek Server.

Multiple Client services can connect to one Server service, improving the maximum number of simultaneous users the platform can handle.

The Peek Client server handles all the live data, and serves all the resources to the Peek Desktop and Peek Mobile services.

The live data is serialised payloads, transferred over HTTP or Websockets. This is the VortexJS library at work.

The Client service buffers observable data from the server. The client will ask the server for data once, and then notifyDeviceInfo multiple users connected to the Client service when the data arrives. However, Plugins can implement their own logic for this if required.

The Client serves all HTTP resources to the Desktop web apps and Mobile web apps, this includes HTML, CSS, Javascript, images and other assets.

The following diagram gives an overview of the clients communications.

../_images/ClientService.png

Mobile Service

../_images/MobileService.png

The mobile service provides two user interfaces, a native mobile app backed by Telerik Nativescript + Angular, and an Angular web app.

VortexJS provides data serialisation and transport to the Peek Client service via a websockets or HTTP connection.

VortexJS provides a method for sending actions to, and observing data from the Peek Client service. Actions and observer data can be cached in the web/native app, allowing it to work offline.

In web developers terminology, the Mobile service is called the frontend, and the Client service is called the backend.

The Mobile service codes structure allows Angular components to be reused to drive both nativescript and web based interfaces. For example :

  • my-component.ns.html (View for Nativescipt XML)
  • my-component.ts (Angular component, written in Typescript)
  • my-component.web.html (View for Browser HTML)

Desktop Service

../_images/DesktopService.png

The Peek Desktop service is almost identical to the Mobile service, using Electron + Angular for Native desktop apps and Angular for the web app.

The Desktop service has a different user interface, designed for desktop use.

The Desktop service codes structure allows Angular components to be reused to drive both electron and web based interfaces. For example :

  • my-component.tron.html (View for Nativescipt XML)
  • my-component.ts (Angular component, written in Typescript)
  • my-component.web.html (View for Browser HTML)

Plugins can be structured to reuse code and Angular components between the Mobile and Desktop services if they choose.

Worker Service

The Peek Worker service provides parallel processing support for the platform using the Celery project.

The Worker service is ideal for computationally or IO expensive operations.

The Peek Server queues tasks for the Worker service to process via a rabbitmq messaging queue, the tasks are performed and the results are returned to the Peek Service via redis.

Tasks are run in forks, meaning there is one task per an operating system process, which achives better performance.

Multiple Peek Worker services can connect to one Peek Server service.

Agent Service

The Peek Agent service provides support for integrations with external system.

The Agent allows Peek to connect to other systems. There is nothing special about the agent implementation, it’s primary purpose is to separate external system integrations from the Peek Server service.

Peek Agent can be placed in other networks, allowing greater separation and security from Peek Server.

Here are some example use cases :

  • Quering and opdate Oracle databases.
  • Providing and connecting to SOAP services
  • Providing HTTP REST interfaces
  • Interfacing with other systems via SSH.

Admin Service

The Peek Admin service is the Peek Administrators user interface, providing administration for plugins and the platform.

The Peek Admin service is almost identical to the Desktop service, however it only has the web app.

The Peek Admin service is an Angular web app.

Plugins

The Peek Platform doesn’t do much by itself. It starts, makes all it’s connections, initialises databases and then just waits.

The magic happens in the plugins, plugins provide useful functionality to Peek.

A plugin is a single, small project focuses on providing one feature.

Enterprise Extensible

The peek platform provides support for plugins to share the APIs with other plugins.

This means we can build functionality into the platform, by writing plugins. For example, here are two publicly release plugins for Peek that add functionality :

  • Active Task Plugin - Allowing plugins to notifyDeviceInfo mobile device users
  • User Plugin - Providing simple user directory and authentication.

The “Active Task plugin” requires the “User Plugin”.

Plugins can integrate with other plugins in the following services:

Peek Plugin Integration Support
Service Plugin APIs
server YES
storage no
client YES
agent YES
worker no
admin YES
mobile YES
desktop YES

You could create other “User Plugins” with the same exposed plugin API for different backends, and the “Active Task” plugin wouldn’t know the difference.

Stable, exposed APIs make building enterprise applications more manageable.

The next diagram provides an example of how plugins can integrate to each other.

Here are some things of interest :

  • The SOAP plugin is implemented to talk specifically to system1. It handles the burdon of implementing the system 1 SOAP interface.
  • The SOAP, User and Active Task plugins provide APIs on the server service that can be multiple feature plugins.
  • A feature plugin is just a name we’ve given to the plugin that provides features to the user. It’s no different to any other plugin other than what it does.
../_images/PluginIntegration.png

One Plugin, One Package

All of the code for one plugin exists within a single python package. This one package is installed on all of the services, even though only part of the plugin will run on each service.

There are multiple entry hooks with in the plugin, one for each peek service the plugin chooses to run on.

Each service will start a piece of the plugin, for example : Part of the plugin may run on the server service, and part of the plugin may run on the agent service.

Here are some plugin examples, indicating the services each platform has been designed to run on. Here are some things of interest :

  • The User and Active Task plugins don’t require the agent or worker services, so they don’t have implementation for them.
  • All plugins have implementation for the server service, this is an ideal place for plugins to integrate with each other.
../_images/PluginArchitecture.png

This diagram illustrates how the plugins will run on the server service.

Each plugins python package is fully installed in the server services environment. Plugins have entry points for the server service. The server calls this server entry hook when it loads each plugin.

../_images/PluginsRunningOnServer.png

There are only two plugins that require the agent service, so the agent will only load these two. Again, the whole plugin is installed in the agents python environment.

../_images/PluginsRunningOnAgent.png

There are three plugins that require the client service, so the client will only load these three. Again, the whole plugin is installed in the clients python environment.

The client, agent, worker and server services can and run from the one python environment. This is the standard setup for single server environments.

../_images/RunningPluginsOnClient.png

There are three plugins that require the mobile service. The mobile service is a python package that contains the build skeletins for the nativescript and web apps.

The client service combines (copies) the files required from each of the plugins into the build environments, and then compiles the web app. (The Nativescript app is compiled manually by developers)

The client and server services prepare and compile the desktop, mobile and admin services, as these are all HTML, Typescript and Nativescript.

The desktop, mobile and admin interfaces need the client and server python services to run, so this compile arrangement makes sense.

../_images/PluginsRunningOnMobile.png

Noop Plugin Example

The NOOP plugin is a testing / example plugin.

It’s designed to test the basic operations of the platform and runs on every service. All of the code for the plugin is within one python packaged, named “peek-plugin-noop”.

../_images/OverviewNoopPlugin.png

The code is available here: Peek Plugin Noop, on bitbucket, It’s folder structure looks like this :

  • peek-plugin-noop (Root project dir, pypi package name)
    • peek_plugin_noop (The plugin root, this is the python package)
      • _private (All protected code lives in here) See subfolders below.
      • plugin-modules (Exposed API, index.ts will expose public declarations. Plugins can structure the subfolders however they like, this dir is available from node_modules/@peek/peek_plugin_noop) See subfolders below.

An example contents of the _private is described below.

  • _private (All protected code lives in here)
    • admin-app (The admin web based user interface)
    • admin-assets (Static assets for the admin web UI)
    • agent (The code that runs on the agent service)
    • alembic (Database schema versioning scripts)
    • client (The code that runs on the client service)
    • desktop-app (The user interface that runs on the desktop/web)
    • desktop-assets (Images for the desktop/web)
    • mobile-app (The user interface that runs on the mobile/web devices)
    • mobile-assets (Images for the mobile/web UI)
    • server (The code that runs on the server service)
    • storage (SQLAlchemy ORM classes for db access, used by server,worker)
    • tuples (Private data structures)
    • worker (The parallel processing Celery tasks that are run on the worker)

An example contents of the plugin-modules is described below.

  • plugin-modules (Exposed API, index.ts will expose public declarations. Plugins can structure the subfolders however they like, this dir is available from node_modules/@peek/peek_plugin_noop)
    • desktop (Exposed API, index.ts exposes desktop only declarations)
    • mobile (Exposed API, index.ts exposes mobile only declarations)
    • admin (Exposed API, index.ts exposes admin only declarations)
    • _private (Code only used by this plugin)
      • desktop (Private desktop declarations)
      • mobile (Private mobile declarations)
      • admin (Private admin declarations)
  • agent (Exposed API, plugins on the agent service use this)
  • client (Exposed API, plugins on the client service use this)
  • server (Exposed API, plugins on the server service use this)
  • tuples (Exposed Tuples, Tuples on any service use these data structures)

Note

Random Fact : Did you know that python can’t import packages with hyphens in them?