Rackspace Examples

Example code that uses jclouds to perform common tasks on the Rackspace open cloud. The class names are self explanatory and the code is well commented for you to follow along.

Requirements

  1. Username and API key for the Rackspace open cloud - See the Getting Started guide.
  2. Java Development Kit (JDK) version 6 or later - Download.
  3. Apache Ant - Download.
  4. Git - Download or you can just download this repository as a zip or tar.gz.

Environment

To setup an environment to compile and run the examples use these commands:

git clone https://github.com/jclouds/jclouds-examples.git
cd jcloud-examples/rackspace/

Now follow the instructions for Getting the binaries using Apache Ant. When you are done you should have a directory with the following files and sub-directories.

$ pwd
/Users/username/jclouds-examples/rackspace

$ ls
build.xml    maven-ant-tasks.jar    README.md    images/    lib/    src/

If you chose an installation method other than Ant and you want to run the Logging example (which is strongly encouraged!) then you'll need to manually download the Logback JAR files. Download the zip or tar.gz file, extract, and drop the JARs into the lib directory.

If you don‘t, you’ll see this error when you try to run the Logging example but the example will still work.

SLF4J: Failed to load class "org.slf4j.impl.StaticLoggerBinder".
SLF4J: Defaulting to no-operation (NOP) logger implementation
SLF4J: See http://www.slf4j.org/codes.html#StaticLoggerBinder for further details.

The Examples

Start with the rackspace package. There you will find general purpose examples of things that are useful across all services.

  • Logging - How to enable and configure logging.
  • Authentication - How you can use your credentials to authenticate with the Rackspace open cloud.

The cloudfiles package demonstrates how to accomplish common tasks for putting files in and getting files from the cloud.

  • CloudFilesPublish - An end to end example of publishing a file on the internet with Cloud Files.
  • Other examples of creating, updating, listing, and deleting containers/objects.

The cloudservers package demonstrates how to accomplish common tasks for working with servers in the cloud.

  • CloudServersPublish - An end to end example of publishing a web page on the internet with Cloud Servers.
  • Other examples of creating, manipulating, listing, and deleting servers.

The cloudblockstorage package demonstrates how to accomplish common tasks for working with block storage (aka volumes) in the cloud.

  • CreateVolumeAndAttach.java - An end to end example of creating a volume, attaching it to a server, putting a filesystem on it, and mounting it for use to store persistent data.
  • Other examples of creating, manipulating, listing, and deleting volumes and snapshots.

Command Line

To run these examples from the command line use these commands:

cd src/main/java/
javac -classpath ".:../../../lib/*:../resources/" org/jclouds/examples/rackspace/*.java

Every example class has a main method that takes your username as the first argument and your API key as the second argument. The one exception to this is the Authentication example that can take an optional third argument if you want to use your password for authentication.

Try out an example.

java -classpath ".:../../../lib/*:../resources/" org.jclouds.examples.rackspace.cloudservers.CreateServer myUsername myApiKey

Watch the terminal for output!

Eclipse

To run these examples from Eclipse follow these instructions.

Create a new Java Project and choose jcloud-examples/rackspace/ as the Location.

Eclipse: Create Java Project

This should create a project with the following Java Settings. Eclipse will have detected the lib directory and filled in all of the Libraries for you.

Eclipse: Java Settings

Try out an example.

  1. Double click CreateContainer example file to open it.
  2. Choose the Run > Run Configurations... menu item.
  3. Press the plus icon to create a new launch configuration.
  4. This will automatically create a launch configuration for CreateContainer.
  5. Switch to the Arguments tab and enter your username and API key in the Program arguments field.

Eclipse: Launch Config

Click Run and watch the Console for the output!

Next Steps

Some suggestions.

  1. Change the examples to do different things that you want to do.
  2. After running some examples, compare the output with what you see in the Cloud Control Panel.
  3. Browse the documentation and have a look at the Javadoc.
  4. Return to the Installation Guide and have a look at the different ways to integrate jclouds with your project.
  5. Join the jclouds mailing list or maybe even the jclouds developer mailing list.

Welcome to the jclouds community!

Support and Feedback

Your feedback is appreciated! If you have specific issues with Rackspace support in jclouds, we'd prefer that you file an issue via Github.

For general feedback and support requests, send an email to:

sdk-support@rackspace.com