The Cloud Platform user interface automates the most common tasks involved in developing a Drupal application:

• Deploying code from a version control system
• Migrating code, databases, and files across your development, staging, and production environments

Cloud Hooks are scripts in your code repository. Cloud Platform executes on your behalf when a triggering action occurs. With Cloud Hooks, you can do other tasks, including the following:

• Perform Drupal database updates each time you develop new code.
• Scrub your production database each time you copy the database to development or staging by removing customer emails or disabling production-only modules.
• Run your test suite or an application performance test each time you deploy new code.

Cloud Hooks in Cloud Next

• The memory limit for Cloud Hooks is 2 GB for each environment.
• Cloud Hooks time out after 3 hours. If you have a Cloud Hook deployment that is expected to take more than 3 hours, you must review and update code accordingly.
• Cloud Hooks that are used for file and database copy operations do not work in the mixed mode. For example, when you attempt to copy file from the previous version of Cloud Platform to its current version, the operation might fail.
• You cannot have more than 5000 processes for Cloud Hooks. If you exceed the process limit, the system restarts the service. 

Installing Cloud Hooks

Your Cloud Hooks are located in your Cloud Platform code repository. Each branch of your repository has a docroot directory with your application’s source code. Cloud Hooks are in the hooks directory next to docroot, not inside of docroot.

You can find the Cloud Hooks directory structure, sample hook scripts, and documentation at Cloud Hooks repository. To start using Cloud Hooks with your application, copy the current version of the Cloud Hooks repository on GitHub into your Cloud Platform repository.

Using Git, you can copy the Cloud Hooks repository with the following commands:

mkdir -p hooks
curl -s https://github.com/acquia/cloud-hooks/tarball/master -o - -L | tar xfz - -C hooks --strip-components 1
git add hooks
git commit -m 'Import Cloud hooks directory and sample scripts.'
git push

Cloud Hooks must be executable

You must set the Unix executable bit for Hook scripts to allow Cloud Platform to run them. Although scripts with the executable bit already set when initially added to your repository will retain the executable bit, you must run the following commands to set the executable bit for files already in your Git repository:

chmod a+x ./my-hook.sh
git add ./my-hook.sh
git commit -m 'Add executable bit to my-hook.sh'
git push

Creating good hook scripts

You must thoroughly test all hook scripts before use. A failed hook script can fail hosting tasks for your entire environment. Note the following factor when you create and name your custom hook scripts:

• Hook scripts run in alphabetical order

  Hook scripts run in ASCII alphabetical order (the numbers 0 through 9, followed by a through z) of the file name. Acquia recommends that you prefix your hook scripts with a two-digit number, such as 03, to control the execution order of your hook scripts.

Quick start

To demonstrate the power of Cloud Hooks in action, you can run a “Hello, Cloud!” script when deploying new code in your development environment after installing Cloud Hooks. To do this, complete the following steps:

• Install the hello-world.sh script to run on code deployments to development.

  copy

  cd /my/repo
  git checkout master
  cp hooks/samples/hello-world.sh hooks/dev/post-code-deploy
  git add .
  git commit -m 'Run the hello-world script on post-code-deploy to Dev.'
  git push
  

• Sign in to the Cloud Platform user interface, and then select your application.
• In the Dev environment code section, click the code switch button and select the master branch. If your Dev environment is already running master, select any other tag, and then select master again.
• Click Continue.
• Click Switch to confirm the switch to the master branch.

• View the task log. After the code deployment task completes, click its Details link to view the hook’s output. The output will appear similar to the following example:

  copy

  Started
  Updating s1.dev to deploy master
  Deploying master on s1.dev
  [05:28:33] Starting hook: post-code-deploy
  Executing: /var/www/html/s1.dev/hooks/dev/post-code-deploy/hello-world.sh
  s1 dev master master [email protected]:s1.git git (as s1@srv-4)
  Hello, Cloud!
  [05:28:34] Finished hook: post-code-deploy
  

You can use the code switch button on the Environments page to restore your development environment to an already-deployed branch.

Cloud Hooks and Remote Administration

If you have a Cloud Platform Enterprise application with a Remote Administration (RA) environment, Cloud Hooks in the RA environment may result in unexpected behaviors or task failures, which can cause the RA automated update process to fail. For more information, see Deploy hooks.

Cloud Hooks and Live Development

If your application uses both Live Development and Cloud Hooks, you may encounter Cloud Hooks triggered on your environment using Live Development, if that environment uses the same Git branch as another environment you’re developing in.

Going further with Cloud Hooks

For complete documentation about Cloud Hooks and the latest sample and community-contributed hook scripts, visit Cloud Hooks repository. By browsing the GitHub repository, you can do the following tasks:

• Find and use the latest sample and community-contributed hook scripts.
• Read the complete documentation on how to write your own custom hook scripts.
• Contribute your own hook scripts so others can use them.

Security considerations for Cloud Hooks

Cloud Hooks are not encrypted. Acquia recommends that Cloud Hooks must not include sensitive items such as:

• SSL certificates
• SSH keys
• Login credentials
• API credentials

Frequently asked questions

Automating with Cloud Hooks

mkdir -p hooks
curl -s https://github.com/acquia/cloud-hooks/tarball/master -o - -L | tar xfz - -C hooks --strip-components 1
git add hooks
git commit -m 'Import Cloud hooks directory and sample scripts.'
git push

chmod a+x ./my-hook.sh
git add ./my-hook.sh
git commit -m 'Add executable bit to my-hook.sh'
git push

Frequently asked questions