Quickstart

InEngine.NET is a plugin-based software application that allows commands to be queued, scheduled, and run directly.

How does it work?

InEngine.NET uses a plugin system to dynamically load .NET assemblies and execute code. It also has a built-in command for launching external non-.NET programs.

Get started by pulling the binaries from the latest release on GitHub.

Then run the echo command from the core plugin:

inengine.exe echo --text"Hello, world"

Or if you're a Linux or Mac OS X fan (like me!), use the inengine shell script (Mono is required):

inengine echo --text"Hello, world"

Instead of downloading binaries and runtimes, you can pull the latest Docker image:

docker pull ethanhann/inengine:latest

Now run a command in a container:

docker run --rm inengine echo --text"Hello, world"

How does queueing work?

Want to queue our example echo command to run in the background or possibly on another server?

Use the core plugin's queue:publish command:

inengine.exe queue:publish --plugin=InEngine.Core --command=echo --args "text=Hello, world"

How do we consume that queued echo command?

Use the core plugin's queue:consume command:

inengine.exe queue:consume

How do I run non-.NET commands?

There is a special exec command in the core plugin that allows for the execution of any program you can run at the command line.

For example, create a python script called helloworld.py, make it executable, and add this to it:

#!/usr/bin/env python

print 'Hello, world!'

Whitelist the "helloworld" executable in the appsettings.json file:

{
  "InEngine": {
    // ...
    "ExecWhitelist": {
      "helloworld": "/path/to/helloworld.py"
    }
    // ...
  }
}

Now execute it with the exec command:

inengine exec --executable="helloworld"

Why would you want to do this? It opens up the possibility of running shell scripts, ETLs, Java programs, etc. in the background or on a schedule.

The example python script can be queued:

inengine queue:publish --plugin=InEngine.Core --command=exec --args="executable=helloworld"