Prototype a Node.js Version of the Server

[simianhacker]

Create a prototype of the server portion of Kibana in Node.js. Why would we want to do something like this? Because we want to use Phantom.js to generate PDFs for visualizations. There are also some limitations with the JRuby server that we've been fighting that are impossible to solve.

Things that need to be done:

• Create initial structure in Express 4.0
• Create package.json
• Create endpoint for /config
• Create proxy for /elasticsearch
• Honor the elasticsearch_preserve_host setting in kibana.yml
• Support basic auth for the Elasticsearch endpoint
• Support unsigned certificates for the Elasticsearch endpoint
• Support compression for responses (see Request Compression #2056)
• Add JSON logging for production environments.
• Support loading plugins from two directories (bundled_plugins_folder and external_plugins_folders)
• Create command line options similar to JRuby version to override settings form the command line
• Modify grunt tasks for building the NPM module
• Create a system for building embedded binaries for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux 32/64
• Publish Kibana as an NPM module
• Change grunt dev to start the Express app
• Create batch script for Windows
• Create shell script for Unix systems

[w33ble]

+1

[rashidkpc]

+1, this could be super cool

[pemontto]

👍

[noamgal]

@simianhacker, is it possible you to update when each of above items in the list is done (and maybe add commit hash) ?
I'm mostly interested in "Support basic auth for the Elasticsearch endpoint"

[simianhacker]

@noamgal You can see the proxy server here: https://github.com/simianhacker/kibana/blob/feature/node-server/src/server/routes/proxy.js

[td-edge]

What limitations were you seeing with ruby?

[simianhacker]

It's a combination of factors:

• JRuby is stuck on 1.9.3
• Slow startup times in JRuby
• JRuby doesn't support response compression.
• Ruby is not a suitable proxy or web server. It's a really good scripting language when it's paired with a web server (like Nginix or Apache). 
• Node.js is really good at IO based servers (web and proxy servers)
• Node.js is a better fit for our team and the the tooling we use for development.
• We have plans to use Phantom.js to generate PDFs

[megastef]

+1 I would add flexible url router concept (e.g. where to store kibana dashboards, e.g. in user specific index/file/db)

[jordansissel]

+1 love this plan

[megastef]

do you know this already?
https://github.com/fangli/kibana-authentication-proxy