Transcript RT - Nordic Perl Workshop

RT
Keeping track of things
Hi, I’m Jesse
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jesse@{ fsck | bestpractical } .com
President of Best Practical Solutions
Perl hacker
Recovering sysadmin
Overview
• What RT is
• Who uses RT
• How to use RT
• How RT is put together
• How to extend RT
What RT is (buzzwords)
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Issue tracking platform
Enterprise grade
Open source
Internationalized
Who uses RT
Usage scenarios
– Bug tracking
– Customer service
– Helpdesk
– Network Operations
– Project Management
– Collaboration (OSCon)
– Weblog
The RT mindset
– it’s a historical record and a project manager
– Everything is a ticket
– No task is too big
– No task is too small
– Update your tickets often
– It’s better to have a vague ticket than no ticket
– Don’t send yourself email reminders, send them to
RT
How to use RT
By email
• End users don’t need to do anything
special
• Except feel like they’re getting special
attention
• RT magically routes mail to the people
who need to see it
On the web
How RT is built
Layer cake
Database
• RT is composed of over a dozen types of
objects, all of which interrelate
• Building your own relational database out of
BDB or flat files on disk isn’t our idea of fun
• Organizations want to be able to use their
own tools to query RT
• RT uses an SQL backend
RT’s database schema
RT Core
Ticketing system
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Principals
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Queues
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Users
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ScripActions
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Groups
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ScripConditions
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GroupMembers
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Templates
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CachedGroupMembers
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Scrips
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ACL
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CustomFields
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Links
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CustomFieldValues
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Tickets
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TicketCustomFieldValues
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Transactions
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Attachments
Writing directly to the
database is wrong
– RT is a complex application with complex
relationships between database tables
– Querying the database for reporting is OK,
but usually unnecessary
– We’ve got a better way…
DBIx::SearchBuilder
– It’s an object-relational mapper
– It hides SQL from your application
• RT’s PostgreSQL and Oracle ports were completed without
changes to RT, just to SearchBuilder.
– It lets you turn certain kinds of database into singleton and
collection objects
– It’s kind of like Class::DBI
– (almost) every RT object is a
DBIx::Searchbuilder::Something
SearchBuilder is simplicity
# Instantiate an empty ticket object
$t = new RT::Ticket( $RT::SystemUser );
# Load the ticket we care about
$t->Load( 42 );
# Print the ticket’s subject
print $t->Subject;
Singleton Objects
• DBIx::SearchBuilder::Record takes care of
– Creators
my $user = RT::User->new($RT::SystemUser);
$user->Create(Name => ‘jrv’, EmailAddress => ‘[email protected]’);
– Loaders
$user->LoadByCols(EmailAddress => ‘[email protected]’);
– Accessors
print $user->Name;
– Mutators
$user->SetName(‘jesse’);
– Destructors
$user->Delete();
Collection Objects
• Every singleton has a corresponding
DBIx::SearchBuilder ‘collection’ object
• Complex searches without raw SQL
my $users = RT::Users->new($RT::SystemUser);
$users->Limit(FIELD => ‘EmailAddress’, OPERATOR => ‘LIKE’,
VALUE => ‘fsck.com’);
while (my $user = $users->Next) {
print “Found “.$user->EmailAddress.”\n”;
}
RT Core
The RT Core Objects
• DBIx::SearchBuilder::Record subclasses
– Ticket
– Queue
– User
– Group
– And Others
• ACE, Attachment, GroupMember, CachedGroupMember, Link,
Principal, CustomField, CustomFieldValue,
TicketCustomFieldValue, Transaction
Overlay and local classes
• Core database-access classes are
autogenerated
– When the database changes, you don’t want to
hand-hack code
– When you make changes to RT, you want your
changes to persist seamlessly across minor
version upgrades
• Most sites don’t track local source changes
• Even if they do, merging sucks
How Overlays work
eval "require RT::Ticket_Overlay";
if ($@ && $@ !~ qr{^Can't locate RT/Ticket_Overlay.pm}) {
die $@;
};
eval "require RT::Ticket_Local";
if ($@ && $@ !~ qr{^Can't locate RT/Ticket_Local.pm}) {
die $@;
};
Principals, Users and
Groups
• Principals
– Every User is a Principal
– Every Group is a Principal
– We can treat users and groups as
equivalent for ACL checks and Group
Membership
• Groups can contain users and groups
– Groups can’t contain themselves
Authentication
• RT has its own internal authentication system
• RT needs to have a user object for any user before
they’re allowed to access RT
– They are autocreated on email submission, if you grant
‘Everyone’ the right to create/correspond/comment on tickets
• You can tie RT into your own authentication source
ACL system
• ACLs can apply to any DBIx::SB::Record
• Any Record object type can define what rights
it supports
• Rights can be granted to any user or group
• Other systems that drop on top of RT can use
the ACL system
Delegation
• Supports basic delegation of rights
• Doesn’t support “partial” delegation of a
given right
• Doesn’t support “redelegation of rights”
• When a user’s right to do something is
revoked, delegates also have right
revoked
ACL Queries
• Currently supports
– Does $principal have $right for any object
in @objects?
– What principals has $right for $object?
• Should also support
– What rights does $principal have for
$object
Mason application server
• RT’s web interface is built on HTML::Mason
– Easy to start hacking on, especially if you know
perl
– Fast
– Flexible
• Multiple Component Roots
– System
– Local
Handlers
• mod_perl
• FastCGI
• SpeedyCGI
Brief comparison to
JSP,ASP,PHP,TT
• Mason is like ASP or JSP, but for perl
• Unlike the Template Toolkit, it’s all perl,
all the time
• Unlike PHP, there’s a real language
behind it
I18N and L10N
Internationalization
Building blocks
– UTF8/Unicode
– Encode
– Locale::MakeText{::Lexicon,}
String Extraction
• Overview
• Core
$self->loc(“Created ticket [_1]”, $self->Id);
• Code In Mason
loc(“Created ticket [_1]”, $ticket->Id);
• Text In Mason
<&|/l, $ticket->Id &>Created ticket [_1]</&>
• Getting the strings into the .po files
– tool/extract-message-catalog
Localization
Adding a new translation
– Basic internationalization for languages
without cases/aspects
– Extract a fresh .po file
• Example string from .po file
#: html/Admin/Users/Modify.html:80
msgid "Access control"
msgstr "Toegangscontrole”
– Translate .po file
– Check your work
Corporatization
• Localization can be useful just within an
organization.
• Every organization has its own jargon
• It’s a “request, not a ticket”
– PO files can be ‘overlaid’ just like libraries
How to extend RT
User Visible API
• All RT tools use the API we export to the
world
– rt-cron
– web frontend
– SOAP server
• perldoc RT::Ticket
• perldoc RT::Ticket_Overlay
RPC Mechanisms
• Scraping
• REST
– Mail Gateway
– CLI
• SOAP
– Net::RT
Some code examples
RT Preamble
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use lib ("/opt/rt3/lib", "/opt/rt3/local/lib");
use RT;
# Load the config file
RT::LoadConfig();
#Connect to the database and get RT::SystemUser loaded
RT::Init();
A simple tool to resolve a
ticket
[preamble]
use RT::Interface::CLI qw(GetCurrentUser loc);
use RT::Tickets;
my $CurrentUser = GetCurrentUser();
die loc("No RT user found.") unless ($CurrentUser->Id);
my $ticketid = shift;
my $ticket = RT::Ticket->new($CurrentUser);
$ticket->Load($ticketid);
die loc(“Ticket not found”) unless ($ticket->Id) ;
my ($tid, $msg) = $ticket->SetStatus(‘resolved’);
print $msg;
A simple web tool
<%init>
my $tix = new RT::Tickets ($session{‘CurrentUser’});
$tix->Limit(FIELD => ‘Owner’, VALUE => $session{‘CurrentUser’});
</%init>
<h1><&|/l&>My tickets</&></h1>
% while (my $ticket = $tix->Next) {
<%$ticket->id%>: <%$ticket->Subject%> <%loc($ticket>Status)%><br>
%}
Testing
• Make regression tests
– database setup
– core code
– mail gateway
– web ui
• It doesn’t yet test
– with multiple databases
– with multiple perl versions
Development Methodology
• Core controlled by Best Practical
• Linux-style stable and development branches
• Development roadmap is driven by
“enlightened itch-scratching”
• Archive of community contributed add-ons
Recommended reading
• Web UI
– Mason Book
• Core
– RT Style Guide
– perldoc RT::Ticket
– perldoc RT::Ticket_Overlay
• I18N
– perldoc Locale::Maketext::TPJ13
– perldoc Locale::Maketext::Lexicon
Getting in touch
• www.bestpractical.com
– Find RT on the web
• [email protected]
– Chat with other users
• [email protected]
– Get involved in development
• [email protected]
– Report issues you run into
• [email protected]
– Overworked? Lazy? Let us do it for you
• [email protected]
– Hassle Jesse directly
Thanks!
• Got any questions?