Customize the Stack to Connect to the RDS Database - AWS OpsWorks

Customize the Stack to Connect to the RDS Database

Important

The AWS OpsWorks Stacks service reached end of life on May 26, 2024 and has been disabled for both new and existing customers. We strongly recommend customers migrate their workloads to other solutions as soon as possible. If you have questions about migration, reach out to the AWS Support Team on AWS re:Post or through AWS Premium Support.

Once you have created an RDS instance to use as a back-end database for the PHP application server, you can customize MyStack from Getting Started with Chef 11 Linux Stacks.

To connect the PHP App Server to an RDS database

  1. Open the AWS OpsWorks Stacks console and create a stack with a PHP App Server layer that contains one instance and deploy SimplePHPApp, as described in Getting Started with Chef 11 Linux Stacks. This stack uses version1 of SimplePHPApp, which does not use a database connection.

  2. Update the stack configuration to use the custom cookbooks that include the appsetup.rb recipe, and related template and attribute files.

    1. Set Use custom Chef cookbooks to Yes.

    2. Set Repository type to Git and Repository URL to git://github.com/amazonwebservices/opsworks-example-cookbooks.git.

  3. Add the following to the stack's Custom Chef JSON box to assign the RDS connection data to the [:database] attributes that appsetup.rb uses to create the configuration file.

    
{
  "deploy": {
    "simplephpapp": {
      "database": {
        "username": "opsworksuser",
        "password": "your_password",
        "database": "rdsexampledb",
        "host": "rds_endpoint",
        "adapter": "mysql"
      }
    }
  }
}

    Use the following attribute values:

    • username: The master user name that you specified when you created the RDS instance.

      This example uses opsworksuser.

    • password: The master password that you specified when you created the RDS instance.

      Fill in the password that you specified.

    • database: The database that you created when you created the RDS instance.

      This example uses rdsexampledb.

    • host: The RDS instance's endpoint, which you got from the RDS console when you created the instance in the previous section. Don't include the port number.

    • adapter: The adapter.

      The RDS instance for this example uses MySQL, so adapter is set to mysql. Unlike the other attributes, adapter is not used by appsetup.rb. It is instead used by the PHP App Server layer's built-in Configure recipe to create a different configuration file.

  4. Edit the SimplePHPApp configuration to specify a version of SimplePHPApp that uses a back-end database, as follows:

    • Document root: Set this option to web.

    • Branch/Revision: Set this option to version2.

    Leave the remaining options unchanged.

  5. Edit the PHP App Server layer to set up the database connection by adding phpapp::appsetup to the layer's Deploy recipes.

  6. Deploy the new SimplePHPApp version.

  7. When SimplePHPApp is deployed, run the application by going to the Instances page and clicking the php-app1 instance's public IP address. You should see the following page in your browser, which allows you to enter text and store it in the database.

    Text input field labeled "Your Thoughts" with a "Share Your Thought" button.
Note

If your stack has a MySQL layer, AWS OpsWorks Stacks automatically assigns the corresponding connection data to the [:database] attributes. However, if you assign custom JSON to the stack that defines different [:database] values, they override the default values. Because the [:deploy] attributes are installed on every instance, any recipes that depend on the [:database] attributes will use the custom connection data, not the MySQL layer's data for the. If you want a particular application server layer to use the custom connection data, assign the custom JSON to the layer's Deploy event, and restrict that deployment to that layer. For more information on how to use deployment attributes, see Deploying Apps. For more information on overriding AWS OpsWorks Stacks built-in attributes, see Overriding Attributes.