cloudscript-engine

Node.js based Framework to simplify PlayFab's Cloudscript handlers development.

Key features:

• Run and debug your handlers locally using actual PlayFab title database
• Pack your handlers in just one file bundle
• Deploy your handlers easily

Why ?

If you have developed games using PlayFab backend, you know that you start with simple Cloudscript functions. As the game gets more complex, so does your Cloudscript.

Unfortunately, PlayFab doesn't provide a good way to develop or debug your functions. The naive way is to edit directly in Cloudscript web editor or to keep uploading development revisions full of Logs, and watch those Logs to see what's going on.

This is extremely inefficient and error prone.

Additionally, you may want to Unit Test your Cloudscript functions. But this is not easy job because Cloudscript functions rely on a set of globals that get automagically set for you at runtime. To use any modern standard test framework you need isolation and modularity.

On the other hand, Node.js provides an excellent environment to execute javascript (and Cloudscript is nothing but javascript). Node.js also provides a proven module stack and a huge amount of tools.

If we could only write Cloudscript handlers as node modules, where all the contexts are function parameters, and have tools to pack and upload to PlayFab Cloudscript format, then we would be able to version control, write tests, run locally, debug, release management, etc.

This is exactly what cloudscript-engine module does.

It requires you to write your handlers as node modules with a fixed function signature, and in exchange clears the way to agile development and project complexity management.

Installation

Add cloudscript-engine to your list of dependencies in package.json:

$ npm install cloudscript-engine  

Setting up credentials file

Create a file named credentials.json containing your secret keys by title as follows:

{
    "TITLE_1": "TITLE_1_SECRET",
    "TITLE_2": "TITLE_2_SECRET"
}

Execute cloudscript-engine

In order to have cloudscript server running, just execute

$ csengine -t <YOUR_TITLE> <PATH_TO_YOUR_HANDLERS_FILE>
Cloudscript Engine running at http://localhost:3000

Where:

• YOUR_TITLE is the name of the PlayFab title you want to use. It must be present in your credentials file
• PATH_TO_YOUR_HANDLERS_FILE is the path to your handlers' entry point (usually an index.js file).

See Handler example for additional information regarding handlers format and implementation.

Now you only have to change your PlayFab client to use the localhost endpoint

Extended documentation

More deep knowledge on how to use cloudscript-engine see Github wiki here