Having discussed the business case for Jetty 9 and SPDY, this blog presents a simple tutorial for runing PHP web applications like WordPress on Jetty with SPDY.
Get Jetty
First you’ll need a distribution of Jetty, which you can download, unpack and run with the following (I use wget to download from the command line, or you can just download with a browser from here):
wget -U none http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/eclipse/jetty/jetty-distribution/9.0.2.v20130417/jetty-distribution-9.0.2.v20130417.zip unzip jetty-distribution-9.0.2.v20130417.zip cd jetty-distribution-9.0.2.v20130417 java -jar start.jar
You can point your browser at http://localhost:8080/ to verify that Jetty is running (Just ctrl-C jetty when you want to stop it).
Configure SPDY
Next you’ll need to download NPN (for SPDY protocol negotiation) from here and save in the lib directory:
wget -O lib/npn-boot-1.1.5.v20130313.jar -U none http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/mortbay/jetty/npn/npn-boot/1.1.5.v20130313/npn-boot-1.1.5.v20130313.jar
To configure SPDY create the file start.d/spdy.ini with the following content:
--exec -Xbootclasspath/p:lib/npn-boot-1.1.5.v20130313.jar OPTIONS=spdy jetty.spdy.port=8443 jetty.secure.port=8443 etc/jetty-ssl.xml etc/jetty-spdy.xml
Restart jetty (java -jar start.jar) and you can now verify that you are running SPDY by pointing a recent Chrome or Firefox browser at https://localhost:8443/. You may have to accept the security exception for the self signed certificate that is bundled with the jetty distro. FF indicates that they are using SPDY with a little green lightening symbol in the address bar.
Enable PHP
There are several ways to PHP enable Jetty, but the one I’m using for this demonstration is php-java-bridge, which you can download in a complete WAR file from here. To install and test in a context ready for wordpress:
mkdir webapps/wordpress cd webapps/wordpress unzip /tmp/JavaBridgeTemplate621.war cd ../.. java -jar start.jar
You can then test that PHP is working by browsing to http://localhost:8080/wordpress/test.php and you can test that PHP is working under SPDY by browsing https://localhost:8443/wordpress/test.php.
Install WordPress
You now have a Jetty SPDY server serving PHP, so let’s install WordPress as an example of PHP webapplication. You can download WordPress from here and install it as follows:
cd webapps rm index.php unzip /tmp/wordpress-3.5.1.zip cd .. java -jar start.jar
You can browse to WordPress at http://localhost:8080/wordpress/ where you should see a screen inviting you to “Create a Configuration File”. You’ll need a MYSQL database instance to proceed and 2 screens later you are running WordPress over HTTP.
You’ll note that if you try immediately to access wordpress with SPDY, you get badly redirected back to the 8080 port with the https protocol! This is just WordPress being a bit dumb when it comes to SSL and I suggest you google WordPress SSL and have a read of some of the configuration and plugin options available. Take special note of how you can easily lock yourself out of the admin pages! Which you will do if you simply update the wordpress URL under general settings to https://localhost:8443/wordpress. You’ll also need to read up on running WordPress on non standard ports, but this is not a blog about wordpress, so I wont go into the options here, other than to say that difficulties with the next few steps are the SPDY as they are for SSL (and that the wordpress guys should really read up on using the host header)! If you want a quick demonstration, just change the home URI in general settings and you’ll be able to see the main site under SPDY at https://localhost:8443/wordpress/, but will be locked out of the admin pages.
Conclusion
That’s it! A few simple steps are all you need to run a complex PHP site under Jetty with SPDY! Of course if you want help with setting this up and tuning it, then please consider the Intalio’s migration, performance and/or production support services.