Backdoor

Installation

To start using Backdoor, you will need three steps:

1. Add the backdoor dependency
2. Configure LiveView
3. Add backdoor access

1. Add the backdoor dependency

Add the following to your mix.exs and run mix deps.get:

def deps do
  [
    {:backdoor, "~> 0.1"}
  ]
end

2. Configure LiveView

The Backdoor is built on top of LiveView. If LiveView is already installed in your app, feel free to skip this section.

If you plan to use LiveView in your application in the future, we recommend you to follow the official installation instructions. This guide only covers the minimum steps necessary for the Backdoor itself to run.

First, update your endpoint's configuration to include a signing salt. You can generate a signing salt by running mix phx.gen.secret 32 (note Phoenix v1.5+ apps already have this configuration):

# config/config.exs
config :my_app, MyAppWeb.Endpoint,
  live_view: [signing_salt: "SECRET_SALT"]

Then add the Phoenix.LiveView.Socket declaration to your endpoint:

socket "/live", Phoenix.LiveView.Socket

And you are good to go!

3. Add backdoor access for development-only usage

Once installed, update your router's configuration to forward requests to a Backdoor with a unique name of your choosing:

# lib/my_app_web/router.ex
use MyAppWeb, :router
import Backdoor.Router

...

if Mix.env() == :dev do
  scope "/" do
    pipe_through :browser
    backdoor "/web_console"
  end
end

This is all. Run mix phx.server and access the "/web_console" to configure the necessary modules.

Extra: Add backdoor access on all environments (including production)

If you want to use the Backdoor in production, you should put it behind some authentication and allow only admins to access it. If your application does not have an admins-only section yet, you can use Plug.BasicAuth to set up some basic authentication as long as you are also using SSL (which you should anyway):

# lib/my_app_web/router.ex
use MyAppWeb, :router
import Plug.BasicAuth
import Backdoor.Router

...

pipeline :admins_only do
  plug :basic_auth, username: "admin", password: "a very special secret"
end

scope "/" do
  pipe_through [:browser, :admins_only]
  backdoor "/web_console"
end

If you are running your application behind a proxy or a webserver, you also have to make sure they are configured for allowing WebSocket upgrades. For example, here is an article on how to configure Nginx with Phoenix and WebSockets.

Finally, you will also want to configure your config/prod.exs and use your domain name under the check_origin configuration:

check_origin: ["//myapp.com"]

Then you should be good to go!

Contributing

For those planning to contribute to this project, you can run a dev version of the dashboard with the following commands:

$ mix setup
$ mix dev

Alternatively, run iex -S mix dev if you also want a shell.

Project set up & structure files

The project set up / infrastructure was taken from Phoenix LiveView project, and specifically the version available under this link: https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view/commit/656235af01f923c88c1f68033862399e4e45ab9e and was adjusted to the needs of this project slightly, remaining over all very similar to how development / testing environment for Backdoor works.

License

MIT License. Copyright (c) 2020 Hubert Łępicki, AmberBit Sp. z o. o. MIT License. Copyright (c) 2019 Michael Crumm, Chris McCord, José Valim.