Okapi Guide and Reference

This is the guide and reference to Okapi: a gateway for managing and running microservices.

Introduction
Architecture
Compiling and Running
Using Okapi
Reference
Module Reference
- Life cycle of a module
- HTTP

Introduction

This document aims to provide an overview of concepts that relate to Okapi and the entire ecosystem around it (e.g. core vs modules) as well as details of the implementation and usage of Okapi: by presenting concrete web service endpoints and details of request processing -- handling of request and response entities, status codes, error conditions, etc.

Okapi is an implementation of some different patterns commonly used within the microservice architecture. The most central of them is the so called "API Gateway" pattern which is implemented by the core Okapi 'proxy' service. Conceptually, the API Gateway is a server that is a single entry point into the system. It is similar to the Facade pattern from object-oriented design. Per the standard definition, which Okapi follows quite closely, the API Gateway encapsulates the internal system architecture and provides a unified API that may be tailored to each client; it might also include core responsibilities such as authentication, monitoring, load balancing, caching, request shaping and management, and static response handling: from the Message Queue design pattern to allow broadcasting of requests to multiple services (initially synchronously and eventually, possibly, asynchronously) and returning a final response. Finally, Okapi facilitates communication between services by acting as a Service Discovery tool: service A wanting to talk to service B only needs to know its HTTP interface since Okapi will inspect the registry of available services to locate the physical instance of the service.

Okapi is designed to be configurable and extensible -- it allows one to expose new, or enrich existing, web service endpoints without a need for programmatic changes to the software itself. Registration of new services ('modules' as seen from Okapi) happens by making calls to the Okapi core web services. It is envisioned that the registration, and associated core management tasks, will be performed by the Service Provider administrator. This configurability and extensibility is necessary to allow for app store features in which services or groups of services ('applications') can be enabled or disabled per tenant on demand.

Architecture

Web service endpoints in Okapi can be, roughly, divided into two parts: (1) general module and tenant management APIs, sometimes referred to as 'core' -- initially part of Okapi itself but potentially separable into their own services -- and (2) endpoints for accessing module-provided, business-logic specific interfaces, e.g. Patron management or Circulation. This document will discuss the former in detail and offer a general overview of allowed formats and styles for the latter.

The specification of the core Okapi web services, in its current form, is captured in RAML (RESTful API Modeling Language). See the Reference section. The specification, however, aims to make very few assumptions about the actual API endpoints exposed by specific modules, which are basically left undefined. The goal is to allow for different styles and formats of those APIs (RESTful vs RPC and JSON vs XML, etc.) with only the basic requirement of a common transport protocol (HTTP). It is envisioned that the transport protocol assumption may be lifted or worked around for some special cases (e.g. the ability to integrate non-HTTP, binary protocols, such as a truly asynchronous protocol for operation similar to a message queue).

Okapi's own Web Services

As mentioned, Okapi's own web services provide the basic functionality to set up, configure and enable modules and manage tenants. The core endpoints are:

/_/proxy
/_/discovery
/_/deployment
/_/env

The special prefix /_ is used to to distinguish the routing for Okapi internal web services from the extension points provided by modules.

The /_/proxy endpoint is used for configuring the proxying service: specifying which modules we know of, how their requests are to be routed, which tenants we know about, and which modules are enabled for which tenants.
The /_/discovery endpoint manages the mapping from service IDs to network addresses on the cluster. Information is posted to it, and the proxy service will query it to find where the needed modules are actually available. It also offers shortcuts for deploying and registering a module in one go. There is only a single discovery endpoint covering all of the nodes in a cluster. Requests to the discovery service can also deploy modules on specific nodes, so it is rarely necessary to invoke deployment directly.
The /_/deployment endpoint is responsible for deploying modules. In a clustered environment there should be one instance of the deployment service running on each node. It will be responsible for starting processes on that node, and allocating network addresses for the various service modules. It is mostly used internally, by the discovery service, but is left open in case some cluster management system could make use of it.
The /_/env endpoint is used to manage environment variables -- system-wide properties that are passed to modules during deployment.

These four parts are coded as separate services, so that it will be possible to use alternative deployment and discovery methods, if the chosen clustering system offers such.

What are 'modules'?

Modules in the Okapi ecosystem are defined in terms of their behavior (or, in other words, interface contract) rather than their contents, meaning there is no exact definition of a module as a package or an archive, e.g. with the underlying file structure standardized. Those details are left to the particular module implementation (as noted before, Okapi server-side modules can utilize any technology stack).

Hence any piece of software that manifests the following traits can become an Okapi module:

It is an HTTP network server that communicates using a REST-styled web service protocol -- typically, but not necessarily, with a JSON payload.
It comes with a descriptor file, namely the ModuleDescriptor.json, which declares the basic module metadata (id, name, etc.), specifies the module's dependencies on other modules (interface identifiers to be precise), and reports all "provided" interfaces.
ModuleDescriptor.json has a list of all routes (HTTP paths and methods) that a given module handles, this gives Okapi necessary information to proxy traffic to the module (this is similar to a simplified RAML specification). Modules are identified in the id property of the module descriptor. It consists of two components: product and semantic version and separated by a hyphen. Think of product as implementation. There should only be one implementation enabled for a tenant at a time. The version component specifies the version of the product and this combined serves as a unique identifier for a module. In some cases, Okapi allows only the product to be given, because it is obvious what module ID it corresponds to. But in most other cases, the module ID must be given in full.
It follows versioning rules defined in the chapter Versioning and Dependencies.
WIP: it provides interfaces required for monitoring and instrumentation.

As you can see, none of those requirements specifically state rules for deployment and, as such, it would be entirely possible to integrate a third party web service (e.g. the API of a publicly accessible Internet server) as an Okapi module. That is, assuming the endpoint style and versioning semantics are a close match for what is required in Okapi, and a suitable module descriptor can be written to describe it.

Okapi, however, includes additional services (for service deployment and discovery) that allows it to execute, run and monitor services natively on a cluster that it manages. Those native modules require an additional descriptor file, the DeploymentDescriptor.json, which specifies the low-level information about how to run the module. Also, native modules must be packaged according to one of the packaging options supported by Okapi's deployment service: at this point that means providing the executable (and all dependencies) on each node or using on a self-contained Docker image to distribute the executable from a centralized place.

API guidelines

Okapi's own web services must, and other modules should, adhere to these guidelines as far as practically possible.

No trailing slashes in paths
Always expect and return proper JSON
The primary key should always be called 'id'

We try to make the Okapi code exemplary, so that it would serve well as an example for other module developers to emulate.

Core Okapi Web Service Authentication and Authorization

Access to the core services (all resources under the /_/ path) is granted to the Service Provider (SP) administrator, as the functionality provided by those services spans multiple tenants. The details of authentication and authorization of the SP administrators are to be defined at a later stage and will most likely be provided by an external module that can hook into a specific Service Provider authentication system.

Deployment and Discovery

Making a module available to a tenant is a multi-step process. It can be done in a few different ways, but the most usual process is:

We POST a ModuleDescriptor to /_/proxy , telling Okapi that we know of such module, what services it offers, and what it depends on.
We POST to /_/discovery that we want to have this module running on a given node, and it will tell the deploy service on that node to start the necessary processes.
We enable the module for a given tenant.

We assume some external management program will be making these requests. It can not be a proper Okapi module itself, because it needs to be running before any modules have been deployed. For testing, see the curl command-line examples later in this document.

An alternative way is to not pass the Module ID to the Discovery, but to pass a complete LaunchDescriptor. The ModuleDescriptor may not even have a LaunchDescriptor in this case. This can be useful if running on a cluster where the nodes are quite different, and you want to specify exactly where the files are to be found. This is not the way we imagine Okapi clusters to run, but we want to keep the option open.

Another alternative is to go to an even lower level, and POST the LaunchDescriptor directly to the /_/deployment on any given node. This means that the management software has to talk directly to individual nodes, which raises all kind of questions about firewalls etc. But it allows full control, which can be useful in some unusual clustering setups. Note that you still need to post a ModuleDescriptor to /_/proxy to let Okapi know about the module, but that the /_/deployment will inform /_/discovery of the existence of the module it has deployed.

Of course, you do not have to use Okapi to manage deployments at all, you can POST a DeploymentDescriptor to /_/discovery and give a URL instead of a LaunchDescriptor. That tells Okapi where the service runs. It still needs a Service ID to connect the URL to a ModuleDescriptor that you have POSTed earlier. Unlike the previous examples, you need to provide a unique Instance Id for /_/discovery to identify this instance of the module. This is necessary because you can have the same module running on different URLs, presumably on different nodes inside or external to your cluster. This method can be useful if you make use of Okapi modules that exist outside your cluster, or if you use some container system, perhaps a web server where your modules live as CGI scripts at different URLs.

Note that the deployment and discovery stuff is transient, Okapi does not store any of that in its database. If a node goes down, the processes on it will die too. When it gets restarted, modules need to be deployed on it again, either via Okapi, or through some other means.

The discovery data is kept in a shared map, so as long as there is one Okapi running on the cluster, the map will survive. But if the whole cluster is taken down, the discovery data is lost. It would be fairly useless at that point anyway.

In contrast, the ModuleDescriptors POSTed to /_/proxy are persisted in a database.

Request Processing

Modules can declare two kind ways to handle a request: handlers and filters. There should be exactly one handler for each path. That will be of request-response type by default (see below). If no handlers are found, Okapi will return a 404 NOTFOUND.

Each request may be passed through one or more filters. The phase determines the order in which filters are applied. At the moment we have three phases defined:

auth will be invoked first. It is used for checking the X-Okapi-Token, and permissions.
pre will be invoked just before the handler. It is intended for logging and reporting all requests.
post will be invoked just after the handler. It is intended for logging and reporting all responses.

We expect to add more phases as necessary.

(In previous versions, we had handlers and filters combined in one pipeline, with numerical levels for controlling the order. That was deprecated in 1.2, and will be dropped in version 2.0)

The type parameter in the RoutingEntry in the Moduledescription controls how the request is passed to the filters and handlers, and how the responses are processed. Currently, we support the following types:

headers -- The module is interested in headers/parameters only, and it can inspect them and perform an action based on the presence/absence of headers/parameters and their corresponding value. The module is not expected to return any entity in the response, but only a status code to control the further chain of execution or, in the case of an error, an immediate termination. The module may return certain response headers that will be merged into the complete response header list according to the header manipulation rules below.
request-only -- The module is interested in the full client request: header/parameters and the entity body attached to the request. The headers returned including the response code affects further processing but the response body is ignored. Note that type request-only Okapi will buffer an incoming request body (POST presumably) into memory. This does not scale for large import(s) or the like. Use request-log instead if the response may be ignored.
request-response -- The module is interested in both headers/parameters and the request body. It is also expected that the module will return an entity in the response. This may be e.g. a modified request body, in which case the module acts as a filter. The returned response may then be forwarded on to the subsequent modules as the new request body. Again, the chain of processing or termination is controlled via the response status codes, and the response headers are merged back into the complete response using the rules described below.
redirect -- The module does not serve this path directly, but redirects the request to some other path, served by some other module. This is intended as a mechanism for piling more complex modules on top of simpler implementations, for example a module to edit and list users could be extended by a module that manages users and passwords. It would have actual code to handle creating and updating users, but could redirect requests to list and get users to the simpler user module. If a handler (or a filter) is marked as a redirect, it must also have a redirectPath to tell where to redirect to.
request-log -- The module is interested in the full client request: header/parameters and the entity body attached to the request. This is similar to request-only but the entire response, including headers and response code, is ignored by Okapi. This type appeared in Okapi version 2.23.0.
request-response-1.0 -- This is like request-response, but makes Okapi read the full body before POSTing to the module so that Content-Length is set and chunked encoding is disabled. This is useful for modules that have trouble dealing with chunked encoding or require getting content length before inspecting. This type appeared in Okapi 2.5.0.

Most requests will likely be of type request-response, which is the most powerful but potentially also most inefficient type, since it requires content to be streamed to and from the module. Where more efficient types can be used, they should be. For example, the Authentication module's permission checking consults only the headers of the request, and returns no body, so it is of type headers. However, the same module's initial login request consults the request body to determine the login parameters, and it also returns a message; so it must be of type request-response.

Avoid using request-only and request-response-1.0 if possible, because those require Okapi to buffer whole HTTP request bodies into memory.

Okapi has a feature where a module can exceptionally return a X-Okapi-Stop header, and that will cause Okapi to terminate the pipeline with the result this module returned. It is meant to be used sparingly, for example a module in a login pipeline may conclude that the user is already authorized since he comes from a IP address in the secure office, and abort the sequence of events that would lead to a login screen being displayed.

Although Okapi accepts both HTTP 1.0 and HTTP 1.1 requests, it uses HTTP 1.1 with chunked encoding to make the connections to the modules. Exception: request-response-1.0 as explained above.

Status Codes

Continuation or termination of the pipeline is controlled by a status code returned by an executed module. Standard HTTP status code ranges are accepted in Okapi:

2xx range: OK return codes; if a code in this range is returned by a module, Okapi continues execution of the pipeline and forwards information to the consecutive modules according to the rules described above. At the end of the chain, the status returned by the last module invoked is the one returned to the caller.
3xx range: Redirect codes. The pipeline is terminated, and the response (including any Location header) is immediately returned to the caller.
4xx-5xx range: user request errors or internal system errors; if a code in this range is returned by a module, Okapi immediately terminates the entire chain and returns the code back to the caller.

Header Merging Rules

Since Okapi forwards the response from a previous module on to the next module in the pipeline (e.g. for additional filtering/processing), certain initial request headers become invalid, e.g. when a module converts the entity to a different content type or changes its size. Invalid headers need to be updated, based on the module's response header values, before the request can be forwarded to the next module. At the same time Okapi also collects a set of response headers in order to produce a final response that is sent back to the original client when the processing pipeline completes.

Both sets of headers are modified according to the following rules:

Any headers that provide metadata about the request entity body (e.g. Content-Type, Content-Length, etc.) are merged from the last response back into the request.
An additional set of special debug and monitoring headers is merged from the last response into the current request (in order to forward them to the next module).
A list of headers that provide metadata about the response entity body is merged to the final response header set.
An additional set of special headers (debug, monitoring) or any other headers that should be visible in the final response is merged into the final response header set.

Okapi always adds a X-Okapi-Url header to the request to any modules. This tells the modules how they can make further calls to Okapi, should they need to. This Url can be specified on the command line when starting Okapi, and it can well point to some load balancer in front of multiple Okapi instances.

Versioning and Dependencies

Modules can provide one or more interfaces, and can consume interfaces provided by other modules. The interfaces have versions, and dependencies can require given versions of an interface. Okapi will check dependencies and versions whenever a module is deployed, and also when a module is enabled for a tenant.

Note that we can have multiple modules providing the same interface. These can be deployed in Okapi simultaneously, but only one such module can be enabled for any given tenant at a given time. For example, we can have two ways to manage our patrons, one based on a local database, one talking to an external system. The installation can know both, but each tenant must choose one or the other.

When a module is created with a POST, the required dependencies are also checked - even before it is enabled for a tenant. This is to ensure that, at the very least, there are no modules that have dependencies that would never be satisfied when eventually enabled for a tenant. It also ensures that there are no cyclic dependencies.

Version numbers

We use a 3-part versioning scheme for module software versions, for example 3.1.41 -- very much like Semantic Versioning. Interface versions consist only of the first two parts, as they have no implementation version.

The first number is the major version. It needs to be incremented whenever making a change that is not strictly backwards compatible, for example removing functionality or changing semantics.

The second number is the minor version. It needs to be incremented whenever backwards-compatible changes are made, for example adding new functionality or optional fields.

The third number is the software version. It should be incremented on changes that do not affect the interface, for example fixing bugs or improving efficiency.

Although it is strongly recommended to use this versioning schema for all modules, Okapi does not enforce it for modules. The reason is that Okapi does not need to know anything about module versions -- it only worries about the interfaces being compatible.

Okapi does require that all modules that have the same id, will indeed be the same piece of software. We have adopted a convention of using ids that consist of a short name, followed by a software version. For example "test-basic-1.2.0".

When checking interface versions, Okapi will require that the major version number matches exactly what is required, and that the minor version is at least as high as required.

If a module requires an interface 3.2, it will accept:

3.2 -- Same version
3.4 -- Higher minor version, compatible interfaces

But it will reject:

2.2 -- Lower major version
4.7 -- Higher major version
3.1 -- Lesser minor version

See further explanation of Version numbers.

Security

Most of the security discussion has been moved into its own document, Okapi Security Model. This chapter of this Okapi Guide just provides a quick overview.

The security model is concerned about three things:

Authentication -- That we know who the user is.
Authorization -- That the user is allowed to make this request.
Permissions -- Mapping from user roles all the way down to detailed permissions Most of this work has been delegated to modules, so Okapi itself will not have to do so much work. But it still needs to orchestrate the whole operation.

Ignoring all the messy details, this how it works: The client (often on a web browser, but can really be anything) calls the /authn/login service to identify itself. Depending on the tenant, we may have different authentication modules serving the /authn/login request, and they may take different parameters (username and password are the most likely, but we can have anything from simple IP authentication to complex interactions with LDAP, OAuth, or other systems).

The authorization service returns a token to the client, and the client passes this token in a special header in all requests it makes to Okapi. Okapi in turn passes it to the authorization module, together with information of what modules will be called to satisfy the request, and what permissions those modules require and desire, and if they have special module level permissions. The authorization service checks the permissions. If required permissions are not there, the whole request is denied. If all is well, the module returns information about the desired permissions, and possibly special tokens to be passed to some modules.

Okapi passes the request to each module in the pipeline in turn. Each of them get information of the desired permissions, so they can alter the behavior as needed, and a token that they can use for further calls.

The trivial okapi-test-auth-module module included in the Okapi source tree does not implement much of this scheme. It is there just to help us test the parts that Okapi needs to handle.

Open Issues

Caching

Okapi can provide an additional caching layer between modules, especially in busy, read-heavy, multi-module pipelines. We plan to follow standard HTTP mechanisms and semantics in this respect, and implementation details will be established within the coming months.

Instrumentation and Analytics

In a microservices architecture, monitoring is key to ensure robustness and health of the entire system. The way to provide useful monitoring is to include well-defined instrumentation points ("hooks") before and after each step of execution of the request processing pipeline. Besides monitoring, instrumentation is crucial for the ability to quickly diagnose issues in the running system ("hot" debugging) and discovering performance bottlenecks (profiling). We are looking at established solutions in this regard: e.g. JMX, Micrometer Metrics, Graphite, etc.

A multi-module system may provide a wide variety of metrics and an immense amount of measurement data. Only a fraction of this data can be analyzed at runtime, most of it must be captured for analysis at a later stage. Capturing and storing data in a form that lends itself to an effortless post factum analysis is essential for analytics and we are looking into integration between open and popular solutions and Okapi.

Response Aggregation

There is no direct support for response aggregation in Okapi at the moment, as Okapi assumes sequential execution of the pipeline and forwards each response to the next module in the pipeline. In this mode, it is entirely possible to implement an aggregation module that will communicate with multiple modules (via Okapi, to retain the provided authentication and service discovery) and combine the responses. In further releases a more generic approach to response aggregation will be evaluated.

Asynchronous messaging

At present, Okapi assumes and implements HTTP as the transport protocol between modules, both on the front-end and within the system. HTTP is based on a request-response paradigm and does not directly include asynchronous messaging capabilities. It is, however, entirely possible to model an asynchronous mode of operation on top of HTTP, e.g. using a polling approach or HTTP extensions like websockets. We anticipate that for future releases of Okapi we will investigate the asynchronous approach in depth and provide support for some open messaging protocols (e.g. STOMP).

Compiling and Running

The latest source of the software can be found at GitHub.

The build requirements are:

Apache Maven 3.3.1 or later.
Java 8 JDK
Git 2

As usual, do all development and running as a regular user, not as root.

So with those requirements available, now build with:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/folio-org/okapi.git
cd okapi
mvn install

The install rule also runs tests. Tests should not fail. If they do then please report it, and in the meantime fall back to:

mvn install -DskipTests

If successful, the output of mvn install should have this line near the end:

[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS

Some tests use embedded databases, which takes time to run. In order to skip these tests, use something like:

mvn install -DtestStorage=inmemory

The okapi directory contains a few sub modules. These are:

okapi-core -- The gateway server itself.
okapi-common -- Utilities used by both gateway and modules.
doc -- Documentation, including this guide.
okapi-test-auth-module -- A simple module for testing authentication stuff.
okapi-test-module -- A module mangling HTTP content for test purposes.
okapi-test-header-module -- A module to test headers-only mode.

(Note the build order specified in the pom.xml: okapi-core must be last because its tests rely on the previous ones.)

The result for each module and okapi-core is a combined jar file with all necessary components combined, including Vert.x. The listening port is adjusted with property http.port or port.

For example, to run the okapi-test-auth-module module and listen on port 8600, use:

cd okapi-test-auth-module
java -Dhttp.port=8600 -jar target/okapi-test-auth-module-fat.jar

In the same way, to run the okapi-core, specify its jar file. It is also necessary to provide a further command-line argument: a command telling okapi-core what mode to run in. When playing with Okapi on a single node, we use the dev mode.

cd okapi-core
java -Dhttp.port=8600 -jar target/okapi-core-fat.jar dev

There are other commands available. Supply help to get a description of these.

A Maven rule to run the gateway is provided as part of the pom.xml, in the main directory.

mvn exec:exec

This will start the okapi-core and make it listen on its default port: 9130.

For remote debugging you can use

mvn exec:exec@debug

This command requires Maven >= 3.3.1. It will listen for a debugging client on port 5005.

For running in a cluster, see the Cluster example below.

Using Okapi

These examples show how to use Okapi from the command line, using the curl http client. You should be able to copy and paste the commands to your command line from this document.

The exact definition of the services is in the RAML files listed in the Reference section.

Storage

Okapi defaults to an internal in-memory mock storage, so it can run without any database layer under it. This is fine for development and testing, but of course in real life we will want some of our data to persist from one invocation to the next. At the moment, MongoDB and PostgreSQL storage can be enabled by option -Dstorage=mongo and -Dstorage=postgres respectively to the command line that starts Okapi.

We are moving away from the Mongo backend. For its command line options, you will have to look in the code in MongoHandle.java.

Initializing the PostgreSQL database is a two-step operation. First we need to create a user and a database in PostgreSQL. This needs to be only once on any given machine. On a Debian box that will be something like this:

   sudo -u postgres -i
   createuser -P okapi   # When it asks for a password, enter okapi25
   createdb -O okapi okapi

The values 'okapi', 'okapi25', and 'okapi' are defaults intended for development use only. In real production, some DBA will have to set up a proper database and its parameters, which will need to be passed to Okapi on the command line.

The second step is creating the necessary tables and indexes. Okapi will do this for you on startup if you are starting from an empty database. In addition, Okapi offers special-purpose commands to manage database initialization and purging.

initdatabase: removes existing tables and data if available and creates the necessary stuff, and exits Okapi.
purgedatabase: removes existing tables and data only, does not reinitialize.

For more information on Okapi commands, see the Okapi program reference.

If you need to dig into Okapi's PostgreSQL database, you can do it with a command like this:

psql -U okapi postgresql://localhost:5432/okapi

Curl examples

The examples in the following sections can be pasted into a command-line console.

It is also possible to extract all the example records with a perl one-liner, assuming you have this MarkDown source of this guide in the current directory as guide.md -- as is the case in the source tree. This leaves them all in /tmp as files like okapi-tenant.json

perl -n -e 'print if /^cat /../^END/;' guide.md | sh

After that, it is also possible to run all the examples with a slightly more complex command:

perl -n -e 'print if /^curl /../http/; ' guide.md |
  grep -v 8080 | grep -v DELETE |
  sh -x

(See the script doc/okapi-examples.sh which runs the above two commands.)

This explicitly omits the cleaning up DELETE commands, so it leaves Okapi in a well-defined state with a few modules enabled for a few known tenants.

Example modules

Okapi is all about invoking modules, so we need to have a few to play with. It comes with three dummy modules that demonstrate different things.

Note that these are only intended for demonstration and test purposes. Do not base any real modules on these.

There are additional modules in the separate repository folio-sample-modules.

Okapi-test-module

This is a very simple module. If you make a GET request to it, it will reply "It works". If you POST something to it, it will reply with "Hello" followed by whatever you posted. It can do a few other tricks too, like echoing request headers. These are used in the tests for okapi-core.

Normally Okapi will be starting and stopping these modules for you, but we will run this one directly for now -- mostly to see how to use curl, a command-line HTTP client that is useful for testing.

Open a console window, navigate to the okapi project root and issue the command:

java -jar okapi-test-module/target/okapi-test-module-fat.jar

This starts the okapi-test-module listening on port 8080.

Now open another console window, and try to access the test module with:

curl -w '\n' http://localhost:8080/testb

It should tell you that it works.

The option "-w '\n'" is just to make curl output an extra newline, because the responses do not necessarily end in newlines.

Now we will try to POST something to the test module. In real life this would be a JSON structure, but for now a simple text string will do.

echo "Testing Okapi" > okapi.txt
curl -w '\n' -X POST -d @okapi.txt http://localhost:8080/testb

Again we have the -w option to get a newline in the output, and this time we add -X POST to make it a post request, and -d @okapi.txt to specify the name of the file containing the data that we want to post.

The test module should respond with

Hello Testing Okapi

which is our test data, with a "Hello" prepended to it.

That is enough about the okapi-test-module for now. Go back to the window where you left it running, and kill it with a Ctrl-C command. It should not have produced any output after the initial messages.

Okapi-test-header-module

The test-header module demonstrates the use of a type=headers module; that is a module which inspects HTTP headers and produces a new set of HTTP headers. The response body is ignored and should be empty.

Start with:

java -jar okapi-test-header-module/target/okapi-test-header-module-fat.jar

The module reads X-my-header from leading path /testb. If that header is present, it will take its value and append ,foo. If no such header is present, it will use the value foo.

These two cases can be demonstrated with:

curl -w '\n' -D- http://localhost:8080/testb

and

curl -w '\n' -H "X-my-header:hey" -D- http://localhost:8080/testb

As above, now stop that simple verification.

Okapi-test-auth-module

Okapi itself does not do authentication: it delegates that to a module. In real life, the auth stuff is divided between different modules, for example mod-authtoken, mod-login, and mod-permissions, but for our test purposes we have a dummy module that can be used to demonstrate how it works.

The dummy module supports two functions: /authn/login is, as its name implies, a login function that takes a username and password, and if acceptable, returns a token in a HTTP header. Any other path goes through the check function that checks that we have a valid token in the HTTP request headers.

We will see examples of this when we get to play with Okapi itself. If you want, you can verify the module directly as with the okapi-test-module.

Running Okapi itself

Now we are ready to start Okapi. Note: for this example to work it is important that the current directory of the Okapi is the top-level directory .../okapi.

java -Dtrace_headers=true -jar okapi-core/target/okapi-core-fat.jar dev

The dev command tells to run it in development mode, which makes it start with a known clean state without any modules or tenants defined.

Setting trace_headers to true makes Okapi return HTTP header X-Okapi-Trace with information about modules involved in a call.

Okapi lists its PID (process ID) and says API Gateway started. That means it is running, and listening on the default port which happens to be 9130, and using in-memory storage. (To use PostgreSQL storage instead, add -Dstorage=postgres to the command line.)

When Okapi starts up for the first time, it checks if we have a ModuleDescriptor for the internal module that implements all the endpoints we use in this example. If not, it will create it for us, so that we can use Okapi itself. We can ask Okapi to list the known modules:

curl -w '\n' -D -  http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/modules

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
X-Okapi-Trace: GET okapi-2.29.0-SNAPSHOT /_/proxy/modules : 200 8081us
Content-Length: 60

[ {
  "id" : "okapi-2.29.1-SNAPSHOT",
  "name" : "Okapi"
} ]

The version number will change over time. This example was run on a development branch, so the version has the -SNAPSHOT suffix.

Since all Okapi operations are done on behalf of a tenant, Okapi will make sure that we have at least one defined when we start up. Again, you can see it with:

curl -w '\n' -D - http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
X-Okapi-Trace: GET okapi-2.29.0-SNAPSHOT /_/proxy/tenants : 200 450us
Content-Length: 105

[ {
  "id" : "supertenant",
  "name" : "supertenant",
  "description" : "Okapi built-in super tenant"
} ]

Example 1: Deploying and using a simple module

So we need to tell Okapi that we want to work with some modules. In real life these operations would be carried out by a properly authorized administrator.

As mentioned above, the process consists of three parts: deployment, discovery, and configuring the proxying.

Deploying the test-basic module

To tell Okapi that we want to use the okapi-test-module, we create a JSON structure of a moduleDescriptor and POST it to Okapi:

cat > /tmp/okapi-proxy-test-basic.1.json <<END
{
  "id": "test-basic-1.0.0",
  "name": "Okapi test module",
  "provides": [
    {
      "id": "test-basic",
      "version": "2.2",
      "handlers": [
        {
          "methods": [ "GET", "POST" ],
          "pathPattern": "/testb",
          "permissionsRequired": [ "test-basic.get.list" ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "requires": [],
  "launchDescriptor": {
    "exec": "java -Dhttp.port=%p -jar okapi-test-module/target/okapi-test-module-fat.jar"
  }
}
END

The id is what we will be using to refer to this module later. The version number is included in the id, so that the id uniquely identifies exactly what module we are talking about. (Okapi does not enforce this, it is also possible to use UUIDs or other things, as long as they are truly unique, but we have decided to use this naming scheme for all modules.)

This module provides just one interface, called test-basic. It has one handler that indicates that the interface is interested in GET and POST requests to the /testb path and nothing else.

The launchDescriptor tells Okapi how this module is to be started and stopped. In this version we use a simple exec command line. Okapi will start a process, remember the PID, and just kill it when we are done.

The moduleDescriptor can contain much more stuff, more about that in later examples.

So, let's post it:

curl -w '\n' -X POST -D - \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-proxy-test-basic.1.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/modules

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Type: application/json
Location: /_/proxy/modules/test-basic-1.0.0
X-Okapi-Trace: POST okapi-2.29.0-SNAPSHOT /_/proxy/modules : 201 9786us
Content-Length: 370

{
  "id" : "test-basic-1.0.0",
  "name" : "Okapi test module",
  "requires" : [ ],
  "provides" : [ {
    "id" : "test-basic",
    "version" : "2.2",
    "handlers" : [ {
      "methods" : [ "GET", "POST" ],
      "pathPattern" : "/testb",
      "permissionsRequired": [ "test-basic.get.list" ]
    } ]
  } ],
  "launchDescriptor" : {
    "exec" : "java -Dhttp.port=%p -jar okapi-test-module/target/okapi-test-module-fat.jar"
  }
}

Okapi responds with a "201 Created", and reports back the same JSON. There is also a Location header that shows the address of this module, if we want to modify or delete it, or just look at it, like this:

curl -w '\n' -D - http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/modules/test-basic-1.0.0

We can also ask Okapi to list all known modules, like we did in the beginning:

curl -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/modules

This shows a short list of two modules, the internal one, and the one we just posted.

Note that Okapi gives us less details about the modules, for in the real life this could be quite a long list.

Deploying the module

It is not enough that Okapi knows that such a module exists. We must also deploy the module. Here we must note that Okapi is meant to be running on a cluster with many nodes, so we must decide on which one to deploy it. First we must check what clusters we have to work with:

curl -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/discovery/nodes

Okapi responds with a short list of only one node:

[ {
  "nodeId" : "localhost",
  "url" : "http://localhost:9130"
} ]

This is not surprising, we are running the whole thing on one machine, in 'dev' mode, so we only have one node in the cluster and by default it is called 'localhost'. If this was a real cluster, each node would have its own id, either given on Okapi command line when started on that node, or an ugly UUID assigned by the cluster manager. So let's deploy it there.

First we create a DeploymentDescriptor:

cat > /tmp/okapi-deploy-test-basic.1.json <<END
{
  "srvcId": "test-basic-1.0.0",
  "nodeId": "localhost"
}
END

And then we POST it to /_/discovery. Note that we do not post to /_/deployment although we could do so. The difference is that for deployment we would need to post to the actual node, whereas discovery is responsible for knowing what runs on which node, and is available on any Okapi on the cluster. In a production system there would probably be a firewall preventing any direct access to the nodes.

curl -w '\n' -D - -s \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-deploy-test-basic.1.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/discovery/modules

Okapi responds with

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Type: application/json
Location: /_/discovery/modules/test-basic-1.0.0/localhost-9131
X-Okapi-Trace: POST okapi-2.29.0-SNAPSHOT /_/discovery/modules : 201 1025424us
Content-Length: 259

{
  "instId" : "edb1a2e2-752f-4317-bcf5-4818c48397a3",
  "srvcId" : "test-basic-1.0.0",
  "nodeId" : "localhost",
  "url" : "http://localhost:9131",
  "descriptor" : {
    "exec" : "java -Dhttp.port=%p -jar okapi-test-module/target/okapi-test-module-fat.jar"
  }
}

There is a bit more detail than what we posted to it. We only gave it the service Id "test-basic-1.0.0", and it went ahead and looked up the LaunchDescriptor from the ModuleDescriptor we posted earlier, with this id.

Okapi has also allocated a port for this module, 9131, and given it a unique instance ID, It must be unique, since we can have multiple instances of the same module running on different nodes, or even the same one.

Finally Okapi also returns the URL that the module is listening on. In a real life cluster there would be a firewall preventing any direct access to the modules, since all traffic must go through Okapi for authorization checks, logging, etc. But in our simple test example, we can verify that the module is actually running on that URL. Well, not exactly that URL, but a URL that we get when we combine the path from the handler with the base URL above:

curl -w '\n' http://localhost:9131/testb

It works

Creating a tenant

As noted above, all traffic should be going through Okapi, not directly to the modules. But if we try Okapi's own base URL we get:

curl -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/testb

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Length: 63

No suitable module found for path /testb for tenant supertenant

Notice the failure. Okapi defaults to tenant supertenant, but since our module is not enabled for that tenant, it returns 'not found'.

Okapi is a multi-tenant system, so each request must be done on behalf of some tenant. We could use the supertenant, but that would be bad practice.

Let's create a test tenant for this example. It is not very difficult:

cat > /tmp/okapi-tenant.json <<END
{
  "id": "testlib",
  "name": "Test Library",
  "description": "Our Own Test Library"
}
END

curl -w '\n' -X POST -D - \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-tenant.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Type: application/json
Location: /_/proxy/tenants/testlib
X-Okapi-Trace: POST okapi-2.29.0-SNAPSHOT /_/proxy/tenants : 201 1065us
Content-Length: 91

{
  "id" : "testlib",
  "name" : "Test Library",
  "description" : "Our Own Test Library"
}

Enabling the module for our tenant

Next we need to enable the module for our tenant. This is even simpler operation:

cat > /tmp/okapi-enable-basic-1.json <<END
{
  "id": "test-basic-1.0.0"
}
END

curl -w '\n' -X POST -D - \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-enable-basic-1.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Type: application/json
Location: /_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules/test-basic-1.0.0
X-Okapi-Trace: POST okapi-2.29.0-SNAPSHOT /_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules : 201 11566us
Content-Length: 31

{
  "id" : "test-basic-1.0.0"
}

Calling the module

So, now we have a tenant, and it has a module enabled. Last time we tried to call the module, Okapi responded with "Missing tenant". We need to add the tenant in our calls, as an extra header:

curl -D - -w '\n' \
  -H "X-Okapi-Tenant: testlib" \
  http://localhost:9130/testb

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/plain
X-Okapi-Trace: GET test-basic-1.0.0 http://localhost:9131/testb : 200 5632us
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

It works

Another way

There is another way to invoke a module for a given tenant, as shown below:

curl -w '\n' -D - \
  http://localhost:9130/_/invoke/tenant/testlib/testb

It works!

This is a bit of a hack, for some special cases where we can not control the headers in the request, for example a callback from a SSO service. This is quite limited, it will fail for calls that require an auth token (see below). We may add a path to /_/invoke/token/xxxxxxx/.... later for such cases.

The invoke endpoint was added in Okapi 1.7.0

Example 2: Adding the Auth module

The previous example works for anyone who can guess a tenant ID. That is fine for a small test module, but real life modules do real work, and need to be restricted to privileged users. In real life we would have a complex set of modules managing all kind of authentication and authorization stuff, but for this example we only have Okapi's own test-auth module to play with. It will not do any serious authentication, but will be just enough to demonstrate how to use one.

As before, the first thing we create is a ModuleDescriptor:

cat > /tmp/okapi-module-auth.json <<END
{
  "id": "test-auth-3.4.1",
  "name": "Okapi test auth module",
  "provides": [
    {
      "id": "test-auth",
      "version": "3.4",
      "handlers": [
        {
          "methods": [ "POST" ],
          "pathPattern": "/authn/login",
          "permissionsRequired" : [ ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "_tenantPermissions",
      "version": "1.0",
      "interfaceType": "system",
      "handlers": [
        {
          "methods": [ "POST" ],
          "pathPattern": "/_/tenantPermissions",
          "permissionsRequired" : [ ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "requires": [],
  "filters": [
    {
      "methods": [ "*" ],
      "pathPattern": "/*",
      "phase": "auth",
      "type": "headers"
    }
  ]
}
END

The module has one handler, for the /authn/login path. It also has a filter that connects with every incoming request. That is where it decides if the user will be allowed to make the request. This one has a type "headers", which means that Okapi does not pass the whole request to it, just the headers. In real world, these two services can well come from different modules, for example mod-authtoken for the filtering, and some kind of mod-login for authenticating the user.

The pathPattern for the filter uses the wildcard character (*) to match any path. A pathPattern may also include curly braces pairs to match a path component. For example /users/{id} would match /users/abc, but not /users/abc/d.

The phase specifies at which stage the filter is to be applied. At this point, we only have one commonly used phase, "auth", which gets invoked well before the handlers. There are two others, "pre" and "post", which will be invoked right before and after the handler, respectively. We may define more phases as necessary.

We could have included a launchDescriptor as before, but just to demonstrate another way, we have omitted it here. Doing it this way may make more sense in a clustered environment where each module instance may need some extra command-line arguments or environment variables.

So we POST it to Okapi:

curl -w '\n' -X POST -D - \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-module-auth.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/modules

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Type: application/json
Location: /_/proxy/modules/test-auth-3.4.1
X-Okapi-Trace: POST okapi-2.29.0-SNAPSHOT /_/proxy/modules : 201 1614us
Content-Length: 377

{
  "id" : "test-auth-3.4.1",
  "name" : "Okapi test auth module",
  "requires" : [ ],
  "provides" : [ {
    "id" : "test-auth",
    "version" : "3.4",
    "handlers" : [ {
      "methods" : [ "POST" ],
      "pathPattern" : "/authn/login",
      "permissionsRequired" : [ ]
    } ]
  }, {
    "id" : "_tenantPermissions",
    "version" : "1.0",
    "interfaceType" : "system",
    "handlers" : [ {
      "methods" : [ "POST" ],
      "pathPattern" : "/_/tenantPermissions",
      "permissionsRequired" : [ ]
    } ]
  } ],
  "filters" : [ {
    "methods" : [ "*" ],
    "pathPattern" : "/*",
    "phase" : "auth",
    "type" : "headers"
  } ]
}

Next we need to deploy the module. Since we did not put a launchDescriptor in the moduleDescriptor, we need to provide one here.

cat > /tmp/okapi-deploy-test-auth.json <<END
{
  "srvcId": "test-auth-3.4.1",
  "nodeId": "localhost",
  "descriptor": {
    "exec": "java -Dhttp.port=%p -jar okapi-test-auth-module/target/okapi-test-auth-module-fat.jar"
  }
}
END

curl -w '\n' -D - -s \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-deploy-test-auth.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/discovery/modules

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Type: application/json
Location: /_/discovery/modules/test-auth-3.4.1/localhost-9132
X-Okapi-Trace: POST okapi-2.29.0-SNAPSHOT /_/discovery/modules : 201
Content-Length: 268

{
  "instId" : "85a7edcd-9360-413f-a577-284a5edf5e28",
  "srvcId" : "test-auth-3.4.1",
  "nodeId" : "localhost",
  "url" : "http://localhost:9132",
  "descriptor" : {
    "exec" : "java -Dhttp.port=%p -jar okapi-test-auth-module/target/okapi-test-auth-module-fat.jar"
  }
}

And we enable the module for our tenant:

cat > /tmp/okapi-enable-auth.json <<END
{
  "id": "test-auth-3.4.1"
}
END

curl -w '\n' -X POST -D - \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-enable-auth.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Type: application/json
Location: /_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules/test-auth-3.4.1
X-Okapi-Trace: POST okapi-2.0.1-SNAPSHOT /_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules : 201 1693us
Content-Length: 30

{
  "id" : "test-auth-3.4.1"
}

So, the auth module should now intercept every call we make to Okapi, and check if we are authorized for it. Let's try with the same call to the basic module as before:

curl -D - -w '\n' \
  -H "X-Okapi-Tenant: testlib" \
  http://localhost:9130/testb

HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
Content-Type: text/plain
X-Okapi-Trace: GET test-auth-3.4.1 http://localhost:9132/testb : 401 64187us
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

Permissions required: test-basic.get.list

Indeed, we are no longer allowed to call the test module. So, how do we get the permission? The error message says that we need a test-basic.get.list permission. Those we can get from the login service. The dummy auth module is not very clever in verifying passwords, it assumes that for username "peter" we have a password "peter-password". Not overly secure, but enough for this example.

cat > /tmp/okapi-login.json <<END
{
  "tenant": "testlib",
  "username": "peter",
  "password": "peter-password"
}
END

curl -w '\n' -X POST -D - \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -H "X-Okapi-Tenant: testlib" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-login.json \
  http://localhost:9130/authn/login

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Okapi-Trace: POST test-auth-3.4.1 http://localhost:9132/authn/login : 202 4539us
Content-Type: application/json
X-Okapi-Token: dummyJwt.eyJzdWIiOiJwZXRlciIsInRlbmFudCI6InRlc3RsaWIifQ==.sig
X-Okapi-Trace: POST test-auth-3.4.1 http://localhost:9132/authn/login : 200 159934us
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

{  "tenant": "testlib",  "username": "peter",  "password": "peter-password"}

The response just echoes its parameters, but notice that we get back a header X-Okapi-Token: dummyJwt.eyJzdWIiOiJwZXRlciIsInRlbmFudCI6InRlc3RsaWIifQ==.sig. We are not supposed to worry about what that header contains, but we can see its format is almost as you would expect from a JWT: Three parts separated by dots, first a header, then a base-64 encoded payload, and finally a signature. The header and signature would normally be base-64 encoded as well, but the simple test-auth module skips that part, to make a distinct token that can not be mistaken as a real JWT. The payload is indeed base-64 encoded, and if you decode it, you see that it will contain a JSON structure with the user id and the tenant id, and nothing much else. A real-life auth module would of course put more stuff in the JWT, and sign it with some strong crypto. But that should make no difference to Okapi's users -- all that they need to know is how do we get a token, and how to pass it on in every request. Like this:

curl -D - -w '\n' \
  -H "X-Okapi-Tenant: testlib" \
  -H "X-Okapi-Token: dummyJwt.eyJzdWIiOiJwZXRlciIsInRlbmFudCI6InRlc3RsaWIifQ==.sig" \
  http://localhost:9130/testb

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Okapi-Trace: GET test-auth-3.4.1 http://localhost:9132/testb : 202 15614us
Content-Type: text/plain
X-Okapi-Trace: GET test-basic-1.0.0 http://localhost:9131/testb : 200 1826us
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

It works

We can also post things to our test module:

curl -w '\n' -X POST -D - \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -H "X-Okapi-Tenant: testlib" \
  -H "X-Okapi-Token: dummyJwt.eyJzdWIiOiJwZXRlciIsInRlbmFudCI6InRlc3RsaWIifQ==.sig" \
  -d '{ "foo":"bar"}' \
  http://localhost:9130/testb

The module responds with the same JSON, but prepends "Hello" to the string.

The https://github.com/MikeTaylor/okapi-curl shell script simplifies the login and adding the header lines.

Example 3: Upgrading, versions, environment, and the `_tenant` interface

Upgrading can often be problematic. More so in Okapi, since we are serving many tenants, who will have different ideas about when and what to upgrade. In this example we go through the upgrading process, discuss versions, environment variables, and also look at the special _tenant system interface.

Let's say we have a new and improved sample module:

cat > /tmp/okapi-proxy-test-basic.2.json <<END
{
  "id": "test-basic-1.2.0",
  "name": "Okapi test module, improved",
  "provides": [
    {
      "id": "test-basic",
      "version": "2.4",
      "handlers": [
        {
          "methods": [ "GET", "POST" ],
          "pathPattern": "/testb",
          "permissionsRequired": [ "test-basic.get.list" ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "_tenant",
      "version": "1.0",
      "interfaceType": "system",
      "handlers": [
        {
          "methods": [ "POST" ],
          "pathPattern": "/_/tenant"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "requires": [
    {
      "id": "test-auth",
      "version": "3.1"
    }
  ],
  "launchDescriptor": {
    "exec": "java -Dhttp.port=%p -jar okapi-test-module/target/okapi-test-module-fat.jar",
    "env": [
      {
        "name": "helloGreeting",
        "value": "Hi there"
      }
    ]
  }
}
END

Note that we give it a different id, with the same name, but a higher version number. Note also that for this example we make use of the same okapi-test-module program, since we do not have much else to play with. This could also happen in real life, if we only have changes in the module descriptor, like we have here.

We have added a new interface that the module supports: _tenant. It is a system interface that Okapi will automatically call when the module gets enabled for a tenant. Its purpose is to do whatever initialization the module needs, for example to create database tables.

We have also specified that this module requires the test-auth interface at least in version 3.1. The auth module we installed in the previous example provides 3.4, so it is good enough. (Requiring 3.5 or 4.0, or even 2.0 would not work, see Versioning and Dependencies or edit the descriptor and try to post it).

Finally we have added an environment variable in the launch descriptor that specifies a different greeting. The module should report that back when serving a POST request.

The upgrade process starts by posting the new module descriptor, just like with any module. We can not touch the old one, since some tenants may be using it.

curl -w '\n' -X POST -D - \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-proxy-test-basic.2.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/modules

HTTP/1.1 201 Created   ...

Next we deploy the module, just as before.

cat > /tmp/okapi-deploy-test-basic.2.json <<END
{
  "srvcId": "test-basic-1.2.0",
  "nodeId": "localhost"
}
END

curl -w '\n' -D - -s \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-deploy-test-basic.2.json  \
  http://localhost:9130/_/discovery/modules

Now we have both modules installed and running. Our tenant is still using the old one. Let's change that, by enabling the new one instead of the old one. This is done with a POST request to the URL of the current module.

cat > /tmp/okapi-enable-basic-2.json <<END
{
  "id": "test-basic-1.2.0"
}
END

curl -w '\n' -X POST -D - \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-enable-basic-2.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules/test-basic-1.0.0

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Type: application/json
Location: /_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules/test-basic-1.2.0
X-Okapi-Trace: POST okapi-2.29.0-SNAPSHOT /_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules/test-basic-1.0.0 : 201
Content-Length: 31

{
  "id" : "test-basic-1.2.0"
}

Now the new module is enabled for our tenant, and the old one is not, as can be seen with:

curl -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules

If you look at Okapi's log, you see there is a line like this:

15:32:40 INFO  MainVerticle         POST request to okapi-test-module tenant service for tenant testlib

It shows that our test module did get a request to the tenant interface.

In order to verify that we really are using the new module, let's post a thing to it:

curl -w '\n' -X POST -D - \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -H "X-Okapi-Tenant: testlib" \
  -H "X-Okapi-Token: dummyJwt.eyJzdWIiOiJwZXRlciIsInRlbmFudCI6InRlc3RsaWIifQ==.sig" \
  -d '{ "foo":"bar"}' \
  http://localhost:9130/testb

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Okapi-Trace: POST test-auth-3.4.1 http://localhost:9132/testb : 202 2784us
Content-Type: text/plain
X-Okapi-Trace: POST test-basic-1.2.0 http://localhost:9133/testb : 200 3239us
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

Hi there { "foo":"bar"}

Indeed, we see "Hi there" instead of "Hello", and the X-Okapi-Trace shows that the request was sent to the improved version of the module.

Example 4: Complete ModuleDescriptor

In this example we just show you a complete ModuleDescriptor, with all the bells and whistles. By now you should know how to use one, so there is no need to repeat all the curl commands.

{
  "id": "test-basic-1.3.0",
  "name": "Bells and Whistles",
  "provides": [
    {
      "id": "test-basic",
      "version": "2.4",
      "handlers": [
        {
          "methods": [ "GET" ],
          "pathPattern": "/testb",
          "permissionsRequired": [ "test-basic.get.list" ]
        },
        {
          "methods": [ "GET" ],
          "pathPattern": "/testb/{id}",
          "permissionsRequired": [ "test-basic.get.details" ],
          "permissionsDesired": [ "test-basic.get.sensitive.details" ],
          "modulePermissions": [ "config.lookup" ]
        },
        {
          "methods": [ "POST", "PUT" ],
          "pathPattern": "/testb",
          "permissionsRequired": [ "test-basic.update" ],
          "modulePermissions": [ "config.lookup" ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "_tenant",
      "version": "1.0",
      "interfaceType": "system",
      "handlers": [
        {
          "methods": [ "POST" ],
          "pathPattern": "/_/tenant"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "_tenantPermissions",
      "version": "1.0",
      "interfaceType": "system",
      "handlers": [
        {
          "methods": [ "POST" ],
          "pathPattern": "/_/tenantpermissions"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "requires": [
    {
      "id": "test-auth",
      "version": "3.1"
    }
  ],
  "permissionSets": [
    {
      "permissionName": "test-basic.get.list",
      "displayName": "test-basic list records",
      "description": "Get a list of records"
    },
    {
      "permissionName": "test-basic.get.details",
      "displayName": "test-basic get record",
      "description": "Get a record, except sensitive stuff"
    },
    {
      "permissionName": "test-basic.get.sensitive.details",
      "displayName": "test-basic get whole record",
      "description": "Get a record, including all sensitive stuff"
    },
    {
      "permissionName": "test-basic.update",
      "displayName": "test-basic update record",
      "description": "Update or create a record, including all sensitive stuff"
    },
    {
      "permissionName": "test-basic.view",
      "displayName": "test-basic list and view records",
      "description": "See everything, except the sensitive stuff",
      "subPermissions": [
        "test-basic.get.list",
        "test-basic.get.details"
      ]
    },
    {
      "permissionName": "test-basic.modify",
      "displayName": "test-basic modify data",
      "description": "See, Update or create a record, including sensitive stuff",
      "subPermissions": [
        "test-basic.view",
        "test-basic.update",
        " test-basic.get.sensitive.details"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "launchDescriptor": {
    "exec": "java -Dhttp.port=%p -jar okapi-test-module/target/okapi-test-module-fat.jar",
    "env": [
      {
        "name": "helloGreeting",
        "value": "Hi there"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Most of the descriptor should look quite familiar at this point. The big new thing is about permissions. The full permission system is explained in a separate document and managed by the auth module complex. All of that is outside the scope of Okapi itself, and of this guide.

The most visible new thing in this descriptor is the whole new section called permissionSets. This defines what permissions and permission sets this module cares about. Point of terminology: "Permissions", or "Permission Bits" are simple strings like "test-basic.get.list". Okapi and the auth module operate on this granular level. "Permission Sets" are named sets that can contain several permission bits, and even other sets. Those will be reduced to the actual bits by the auth module. These are the lowest level that an admin user normally sees, and form the building blocks for constructing more complex roles.

The permission bits are used in the handler entries. The first one has a permissionsRequired field that contains the permission "test-basic.get.list". That means that if the user does not have such a permission, the auth module tells Okapi, which will refuse the request.

The next entry has a permissionsRequired too, but also a permissionsDesired field with "test-basic.get.sensitive.details" in it. That indicates that the module desires to know if the user has such a permission or not. It is not a hard requirement, the request will be passed to the module in any case, but there will be a X-Okapi-Permissions header that will or will not contain that permission name. It is up to the module to decide what to do with it, in this case it could well decide to show or hide some unusually sensitive fields.

There is also a third field, "modulePermissions" with the value "config.lookup". This tells that our module has been granted this permission. Even if the user will not have such a permission, the module does, and is therefore allowed to do something like looking up the configuration settings.

As noted above, Okapi operates with the raw permission bits. It passed the required and desired permissions to the auth module, which will somehow deduce if the user will have those permissions or not. The details should not concern us here, but clearly the process has something to do with the permissionSets. How does the auth module get access to the permission sets of the moduleDescription? It does not happen by magic, but almost. When a module gets enabled for a tenant, Okapi not only calls the _tenant interface of the module itself, but also sees if any module provides a tenantPermissions interface, and passes the permissionSets there. The permission module is supposed to do that, and receive the permissionSets that way.

Even this example does not cover all the possibilities in a ModuleDescriptor. There are features lingering from older versions (older than Okapi 1.2.0) that are still supported, but will be deprecated and removed in future versions. For example ModulePermissions and RoutingEntries on the top level of the descriptor. For the fully up-to-date definition, you should always refer to the RAML and JSON schemas in the Reference section.

Permissions and the `_tenantPermissions` Interface

As desribed earlier, permissions and permissionSets can be defined in the ModuleDescriptor, but how does mod-permissions learn about them? The answer is via another system interface: _tenantPermissions. This interface, implemented by mod-permissions, is invoked by OKAPI when a module is enabled for a tenant. The permissions defined in that module's ModuleDescriptor are furnished, allowing the permissions module to perform the necessary CRUD operations against permission storage.

When mod-permissions is enabled for a tenant, OKAPI will invoke the _tenantPermissions API for all modules currently enabled for that tenant. This is needed to inform the permissions module of any permissions defined in module descriptors enabled for the tenant prior to mod-permissions.

Note that OKAPI is only responsible for providing the permissions and the corresponding moduleId to the _tenantPermissions API. Determination of the appropriate actions to be taken is the responsibility of the permissions module. Most of this will happen without explicit or special provisioning in the ModuleDescriptor. Adding, removing or updating the permissions in the permissionsSet property is sufficient. One exception to that is renaming or replaceing one or more permissions with another. This is accomplished via the replaces property on the permission object, e.g.

...
  "permissionSets": [
    {
      "permissionName": "test-basic.collection.get",
      "displayName": "test-basic list records",
      "description": "Get a list of records",
      "replaces": [ "test-basic.get.list", "test-basic.view.list" ]
    }, 
...

Assuming test-basic.get.list and test-basic-view.list were defined in previous versions of the ModuleDescriptor, this would result in:

test-basic.get.list and test-basic.view.list being deprecated.
A new permission test-basic.collection.get being created.
Update any permission assignments so that any users that were granted test-basic.get.list or test-basic.view.list are automatically granted test-basic.collection.get
Update any childOf/subPermission relationships. test-basic.collection.get would be added to any permission's childOf or subPermissions fields which contain test-basic.get.list or test-basic.view.list

See the following for additional details of how this is handled by the permissions module:

Migration of Static Permissions Upon Upgrade
Permissions API Definition
TenantPermission API Definition

Optional interfaces

An optional interface is used to specify that a module may use a given interface. The interface specified does not have to be provided by another module. However, if the interface is provided by another module, it must be compatible (major, minor).

The optional property has same structure as the requires property in the module descriptor.

Multiple interfaces

Normally, Okapi proxy allows exactly one module at once to provide a given interface. By using interfaceType multiple in the provides section, Okapi allows any number of modules to implement the same interface. The consequence, however, is that the user of the interface must choose which module to call by specifying HTTP header X-Okapi-Module-Id. Okapi offers a facility which returns list of modules that provide a given interface for a tenant ( _/proxy/tenants/{tenant}/modules?provide={interface} ). Normally the tenant will be the same as the "current" tenant (header X-Okapi-Tenant).

Let's go through this by an example. We'll define two modules that implement the same interface and call one of them. We assume that tenant testlib from the previous example is still present, as well as the auth module. Let's try to define a Module Descriptor for our test module used earlier. The ModuleDescriptor below uses interfaceType set to multiple, so that Okapi allows multiple modules of interface test-multi to co-exist.

cat > /tmp/okapi-proxy-foo.json <<END
{
  "id": "test-foo-1.0.0",
  "name": "Okapi module foo",
  "provides": [
    {
      "id": "test-multi",
      "interfaceType": "multiple",
      "version": "2.2",
      "handlers": [
        {
          "methods": [ "GET", "POST" ],
          "pathPattern": "/testb",
          "permissionsRequired": [ ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "requires": [],
  "launchDescriptor": {
    "exec": "java -Dhttp.port=%p -jar okapi-test-module/target/okapi-test-module-fat.jar"
  }
}
END

Register and deploy foo:

curl -w '\n' -X POST -D - \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-proxy-foo.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/modules

cat > /tmp/okapi-deploy-foo.json <<END
{
  "srvcId": "test-foo-1.0.0",
  "nodeId": "localhost"
}
END

curl -w '\n' -D - -s \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-deploy-foo.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/discovery/modules

We now define another module, bar:

cat > /tmp/okapi-proxy-bar.json <<END
{
  "id": "test-bar-1.0.0",
  "name": "Okapi module bar",
  "provides": [
    {
      "id": "test-multi",
      "interfaceType": "multiple",
      "version": "2.2",
      "handlers": [
        {
          "methods": [ "GET", "POST" ],
          "pathPattern": "/testb",
          "permissionsRequired": []
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "requires": [],
  "launchDescriptor": {
    "exec": "java -Dhttp.port=%p -jar okapi-test-module/target/okapi-test-module-fat.jar"
  }
}
END

Register and deploy bar:

curl -w '\n' -X POST -D - \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-proxy-bar.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/modules

cat > /tmp/okapi-deploy-bar.json <<END
{
  "srvcId": "test-bar-1.0.0",
  "nodeId": "localhost"
}
END

curl -w '\n' -D - -s \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-deploy-bar.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/discovery/modules

And now, enable both modules foo and bar for tenant testlib:

cat > /tmp/okapi-enable-foo.json <<END
{
  "id": "test-foo-1.0.0"
}
END

curl -w '\n' -X POST -D - \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-enable-foo.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules

cat > /tmp/okapi-enable-bar.json <<END
{
  "id": "test-bar-1.0.0"
}
END

curl -w '\n' -X POST -D - \
  -H "Content-type: application/json" \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-enable-bar.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules

We can ask Okapi about which modules implement interface test-multi with:

curl -w '\n' \
  http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules?provide=test-multi

[ {
  "id" : "test-bar-1.0.0"
}, {
  "id" : "test-foo-1.0.0"
} ]

Let's call module bar:

curl -D - -w '\n' \
  -H "X-Okapi-Tenant: testlib" \
  -H "X-Okapi-Token: dummyJwt.eyJzdWIiOiJwZXRlciIsInRlbmFudCI6InRlc3RsaWIifQ==.sig" \
  -H "X-Okapi-Module-Id: test-bar-1.0.0" \
  http://localhost:9130/testb

It works

Okapi version 2.8.0 and later offers a way to list all interfaces offered for a tenant with _/proxy/tenants/{tenant}/interfaces. This can be tuned with query parameters full and type. The full parameter is a boolean. For value true, all interfaces are returned in full. In full mode some interfaces may be repeated - for example for interfaceType=multiple or system. For a full with a value of false , each interface is returned once in a brief format. The type parameter, if given, limits the returned interfaces to an interfaceType. If type is not specified, interfaces of all types are returned.

Cleaning up

We are done with the examples. Just to be nice, we delete everything we have installed:

curl -X DELETE -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules/test-basic-1.2.0
curl -X DELETE -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules/test-auth-3.4.1
curl -X DELETE -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules/test-foo-1.0.0
curl -X DELETE -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/modules/test-bar-1.0.0
curl -X DELETE -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib
curl -X DELETE -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/discovery/modules/test-auth-3.4.1/localhost-9132
curl -X DELETE -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/discovery/modules/test-basic-1.0.0/localhost-9131
curl -X DELETE -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/discovery/modules/test-basic-1.2.0/localhost-9133
curl -X DELETE -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/discovery/modules/test-foo-1.0.0/localhost-9134
curl -X DELETE -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/discovery/modules/test-bar-1.0.0/localhost-9135
curl -X DELETE -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/modules/test-basic-1.0.0
curl -X DELETE -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/modules/test-basic-1.2.0
curl -X DELETE -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/modules/test-foo-1.0.0
curl -X DELETE -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/modules/test-bar-1.0.0
curl -X DELETE -D - -w '\n' http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/modules/test-auth-3.4.1

Okapi responds to each of these with a simple:

HTTP/1.1 204 No Content
Content-Type: application/json
X-Okapi-Trace: DELETE ...
Content-Length: 0

Finally we can stop the Okapi instance we had running, with a simple Ctrl-C command.

Running in cluster mode

So far all the examples have been running in dev mode on a single machine. That is good for demonstrating things, development, and such, but in real production setups we need to run on a cluster of machines.

On a single machine

The simplest cluster setup is to run multiple instances of Okapi on the same machine. This is not how it is supposed to be done, but it is easiest to demonstrate.

Open a console, and start your first Okapi

java -jar okapi-core/target/okapi-core-fat.jar cluster

Okapi prints more startup messages than in dev mode. The interesting message line includes something like

Hazelcast 3.6.3 (20160527 - 08b28c3) starting at Address[172.17.42.1]:5701

It says that we are using Hazelcast - the tool vert.x uses for clustering, and that it is using port 5701 on address 172.17.42.1. The port is the default, but Hazelcast will try to find a free one, so you may end up with another one. The address is the address of your machine, on one of its interfaces. More about that later.

Open another console, and start another instance of Okapi. Since you are on the same machine, both instances can not be listening on the same port. By default Okapi allocates 20 ports for the modules, so let's start the next Okapi on port 9150:

java -Dhttp.port=9150 -jar okapi-core/target/okapi-core-fat.jar cluster

Again Okapi prints some startup messages, but note that also the first Okapi prints some stuff. Those two are connecting, and talking to each other.

Now you can ask Okapi to list the known nodes. On a third console window try this:

curl -w '\n' -D - http://localhost:9130/_/discovery/nodes

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
X-Okapi-Trace: GET okapi-2.29.0-SNAPSHOT /_/discovery/nodes : 200
Content-Length: 186

[ {
  "nodeId" : "0d3f8e19-84e3-43e7-8552-fc151cf5abfc",
  "url" : "http://localhost:9150"
}, {
  "nodeId" : "6f8053e1-bc55-48b4-87ef-932ad370081b",
  "url" : "http://localhost:9130"
} ]

Indeed, it lists two nodes. They each have a URL they can be reached on, and a nodeId that is some random UUID string.

You can ask the other node to list all nodes by changing the port in your URL to 9150, and should get the same list, possibly in a different order.

On separate machines

Of course you want to run your cluster on multiple machines, that is the whole point of clustering.

Warning Okapi uses the Hazelcast library for managing its cluster setup, and that uses multicast packets for discovering nodes in the cluster. Multicast works fine over most wired ethernets, but not nearly so well with wireless. Nobody should use wireless networking in a production cluster, but developers may wish to experiment with laptops on a wireless network. THAT WILL NOT WORK! There is a workaround involving a hazelcast-config-file where you list all IP addresses that participate in your cluster, but it is messy, and we will not go into the details here.

The procedure is almost the same, except for two small details. For the first, there is no need to specify different ports, since those are on separate machines, and will not collide. Instead you need to make sure that the machines are on the same network. Modern Linux machines have multiple network interfaces, typically at least the ethernet cable, and the loopback interface. Quite often also a wifi port, and if you use Docker, it sets up its own internal network. You can see all the interfaces listed with sudo ifconfig. Okapi is not very clever in guessing which interface it needs to use, so often you have to tell it. You can do that with something like this: java -jar okapi-core/target/okapi-core-fat.jar cluster -cluster-host 10.0.0.2 Note that the cluster-host option has to be at the end of the command line. The parameter name is a bit misleading, it is not a hostname, but a IP address that needs to be there.

Start Okapi up on a second machine that is on the same network. Be careful to use the proper IP address on the command line. If all goes well, the machines should see each other. You can see it in the log on both machines. Now you can ask Okapi (any Okapi in the cluster) to list all nodes:

curl -w '\n' -D - http://localhost:9130/_/discovery/nodes

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
X-Okapi-Trace: GET okapi-2.29.0-SNAPSHOT /_/discovery/nodes : 200
Content-Length: 186

[ {
  "nodeId" : "81d1d7ca-8ff1-47a0-84af-78cfe1d05ec2",
  "url" : "http://localhost:9130"
}, {
  "nodeId" : "ec08b65d-f7b1-4e78-925b-0da18af49029",
  "url" : "http://localhost:9130"
} ]

Note how the nodes have different UUIDs, but the same URL. They both claim to be reachable at http://localhost:9130. That is true enough, in a very technical sense, if you use curl on the node itself, localhost:9130 points to Okapi. But that is not very practical if you (or another Okapi) wants to talk to the node from somewhere else on the network. The solution is to add another parameter to the command line, telling the hostname Okapi should return for itself.

Stop your Okapis, and start them again with a command line like this:

java -Dhost=tapas -jar okapi-core/target/okapi-core-fat.jar cluster -cluster-host 10.0.0.2

Instead of "tapas", use the name of the machine you are starting on, or even the IP address. Again, list the nodes:

curl -w '\n' -D - http://localhost:9130/_/discovery/nodes

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 178

[ {
  "nodeId" : "40be7787-657a-47e4-bdbf-2582a83b172a",
  "url" : "http://jamon:9130"
}, {
  "nodeId" : "953b7a2a-94e9-4770-bdc0-d0b163861e6a",
  "url" : "http://tapas:9130"
} ]

You can verify that the URLs work:

curl -w '\n' -D -    http://tapas:9130/_/discovery/nodes

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 178

[ {
  "nodeId" : "40be7787-657a-47e4-bdbf-2582a83b172a",
  "url" : "http://jamon:9130"
}, {
  "nodeId" : "953b7a2a-94e9-4770-bdc0-d0b163861e6a",
  "url" : "http://tapas:9130"
} ]

Naming nodes

As mentioned, the Hazelcast system allocates UUIDs for the nodeIds. That is all fine, but they are clumsy to use, and they change every time you run things, so it is not so easy to refer to nodes in your scripts etc. We have added a feature to give the node a name on the command line, like this:

java -Dhost=tapas -Dnodename=MyFirstNode \
  -jar okapi-core/target/okapi-core-fat.jar cluster -cluster-host 10.0.0.2

If you now list your nodes, you should see something like this:

curl -w '\n' -D - http://tapas:9130/_/discovery/nodes

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
X-Okapi-Trace: GET okapi-2.29.0-SNAPSHOT /_/discovery/nodes : 200
Content-Length: 120

[ {
  "nodeId" : "7d6dc0e7-c163-4bbd-ab48-a5d7fa6c4ce4",
  "url" : "http://tapas:9130",
  "nodeName" : "MyFirstNode"
} ]

You can use the name instead of the nodeId in many places, for example

curl -w '\n' -D - http://tapas:9130/_/discovery/nodes/myFirstNode

So, you have a cluster

The Okapi cluster works pretty much as a single Okapi you have seen before. For most purposes it does not matter which node you talk to, they share all the information. You can try to create a module via one node, a tenant via another, and enable the module for that tenant via the first node again. You have to be a little bit more careful in deploying modules, since you need to control which node to run on. The single-node examples above used just 'localhost' as the nodeId to deploy on, instead you need to pass the UUID you have seen so many times. After you have deployed a module, you can proxy traffic to it, using which ever Okapi you like.

There are some small differences you should be aware of:

The in-memory back-end is shared between all nodes in a cluster. That means that if you take one node down, and start it again, it will sync with the other node, and still be aware of the shared data. Only when all running Okapis are taken down, will the data disappear from memory. Of course, using the Postgres backend will persist data.
You can deploy modules using the /_/deployment endpoint. This has to be done on the very node you want the thing to run. Okapi will inform other nodes about it. Normally you should deploy through the /_/discovery endpoint, and specify the nodeId.
Starting up Okapi can take a bit longer time.

There are two more clustering modes you can use. The deployment starts Okapi up in cluster mode, but without doing the proxying. That can be useful in a cluster where only one node is visible from the outside, the rest could run in deployment mode.

The other mode, proxy, is the reverse of that. It is meant for the Okapi node that receives all requests, and passes them on to the 'deployment' nodes. That would typically be a node that is visible from outside. This kind of division starts to make sense when there is so much traffic that the proxying alone will keep a node fully occupied.

Securing Okapi

In the examples above, we just fired commands to Okapi, and it happily deployed and enabled modules for us, without any kind of checking. In a production system this is not acceptable. Okapi is designed to be easy to secure. Actually, there are several little hacks in place to make it possible to use Okapi without the checks, for example the fact that Okapi defaults to the supertenant if none is specified, and that this tenant has the internal module enabled by default.

In principle, securing Okapi itself is done the same way as securing access to any module: Install an auth check filter for the supertenant, and that one will not let people in without them having authenticated themselves. The auth sample module is a bit simplistic for this -- in real life we would like a system that can handle different permissions for different users, etc.

The exact details about securing Okapi will depend on the nature of the auth modules used. In any case, we have to be careful not to lock ourself out before we have everything set up so that we can get in again. Something along the lines of the following:

When Okapi starts up, it creates the internal module, the supertenant, and enables the module for the tenant. All operations are possible, without any checks.
The admin installs and deploys the necessary auth modules.
The admin enables the storage ends of the auth module(s).
The admin posts suitable credentials and permissions into the auth module(s).
The admin enables the auth-check filter. Now nothing is allowed.
The admin logs in with the previously loaded credentials, and gets a token.
This token gives the admin right to do further operations in Okapi.

The ModuleDescriptor defines suitable permissions for fine-grained access control to its functions. At the moment most read-only operations are open to anyone, but operations that change things require a permission.

If regular clients need access to the Okapi admin functions, for example to list what modules they have available, the internal module needs to be made available for them, and if needed, some permissions assigned to some admin user.

There is a more detailed walk-through about securing an Okapi installation.

Module Descriptor Sharing

Okapi installations may share their module descriptors. With a "pull" operation the modules for the Okapi proxy can be fetched from another Okapi proxy instance. The name "pull" is used here because it is similar to Git SCM's pull operation. The remote proxy instance that Okapi pulls from (or peer) does not need any modules deployed. All that is necessary is that the /_/proxy/modules operation is available. The pull installs all module descriptors from the remote that are not available already. It is based on the module descriptor id, which is supposed to represent a unique implementation of a module.

For the pull operation, Okapi takes a Pull Descriptor. At this stage it includes the URL the remote instance. Future versions of Okapi may include further information in the Pull Descriptor for authentication or other. The path to be invoked for the local Okapi instance is /_/proxy/pull/modules.

The pull operation returns an array of modules that were fetched and installed locally.

Pull Operation Example

In this example we pull twice. The second pull should be much faster than the pull, because all/most modules have already been fetched.

cat > /tmp/pull.json <<END
{"urls" : [ "https://folio-registry.dev.folio.org" ]}
END

curl -w '\n' -X POST -d@/tmp/pull.json http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/pull/modules
curl -w '\n' -X POST -d@/tmp/pull.json http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/pull/modules

Install modules per tenant

Until now - in this guide - we have installed only a few modules one at a time and we were able to track dependencies and ensure that they were in order. For example, the 'test-basic' required 'test-auth' interface that we knew was offered by the 'test-auth' module. It is a coincidence that those names match by the way. Not to mention that a module may require many interfaces.

Okapi 1.10 and later offers the /_/proxy/tenants/id/install call to remedy the situation. This call takes one or more modules to be enabled/upgraded/disabled and responds with a similar list that respects dependencies. For details, refer to the JSON schema TenantModuleDescriptorList and the RAML definition in general.

Install Operation Example

Suppose we have pulled module descriptors from the remote repo (e.g. using Pull Operation Example above) and now would like to enable mod-users-bl-2.0.1 for our tenant.

cat > /tmp/okapi-tenant.json <<END
{
  "id": "testlib",
  "name": "Test Library",
  "description": "Our Own Test Library"
}
END
curl -w '\n' -X POST -D - \
  -d @/tmp/okapi-tenant.json \
  http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants

cat >/tmp/tmdl.json <<END
[ { "id" : "mod-users-bl-2.0.1" , "action" : "enable" } ]
END
curl -w '\n' -X POST -d@/tmp/tmdl.json \
 http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/install?simulate=true

[ {
  "id" : "mod-users-14.2.1-SNAPSHOT.299",
  "action" : "enable"
}, {
  "id" : "permissions-module-4.0.4",
  "action" : "enable"
}, {
  "id" : "mod-login-3.1.1-SNAPSHOT.42",
  "action" : "enable"
}, {
  "id" : "mod-users-bl-2.0.1",
  "action" : "enable"
} ]

A set of 4 modules was required. This list, of course, may change depending on the current set of modules in the remote repository.

For Okapi version 1.11.0 and later the modules may be referred to without version. In the example above, we could have used mod-users-bl. In this case, the latest available module will be picked for action = enable and the installed module will be picked for action = disable. Okapi will always respond with the complete, resulting, module IDs.

If a module is upgraded from an older version, the from property contains the old module ID.

install parameter preRelease

By default all modules are considered for install - whether pre-releases or not. For Okapi 1.11.0, it is possible to add filter preRelease which takes a boolean value. If false, the install will only consider modules without pre-release information.

install parameter tenantParameters

Okapi 2.20.0 and later allows parameter tenantParameters to be passed to modules when enabled or upgraded for a tenant if the _tenant interface provided by the module is version 1.2 and later. The tenantParameters is a string consisting of key-value pairs separated by comma with key and value separated by equal sign (=). It is a single argument as far as URI is concerned so be sure to encode comma as %2C and equal as %3D. See Tenant Interface for more information.

Note that Okapi does not validate tenant parameters. They are passed verbatim to modules. At this time (June 2021), some modules honor the keys loadSample and loadReference.

install parameter invoke

For all calls that enables/disables modules for a tenant, it is possible to completely skip invoking module via HTTP by using query parameter invoke set to false. This facility was added in Okapi 2.40.0. Use with great care and may be used to disable modules if they are no longer running and/or the modules are known to be already "prepared" for use. When invoke is set to false, tenantParameters and purge query parameters are ignored as they only takes effect when Okapi invokes a module.

Upgrading modules per tenant

The upgrade facility consists of a POST request with ignored body (should be empty) and a response that is otherwise similar to the install facility. The call has the path /_/proxy/tenants/id/upgrade. Like the install facility, there is a simulate optional parameter, which if true will simulate the upgrade. Also the preRelease parameter is recognized which controls whether module IDs with pre-release info should be considered.

Upgrades will be seen as action with value enable with from and id properties holding old and new versions respectively.

The upgrade facility is part of Okapi version 1.11.0 and later.

Auto-deployment

For Okapi 2.3.0 and later, the install and upgrade operations takes an optional parameter, deploy, which takes a boolean value. If true, the install operation will also deploy and un-deploy as necessary. This will only work if the ModuleDescriptor has the launchDescriptor property.

Install jobs and asynchronous operations

For Okapi 4.2.0 and later, the install operation can be asynchronous. The asynchronous operation is enabled by parameter async=true. As for the "synchronous" operation, the dependency check is performed first and install/upgrade will return 400 HTTP error upon failure.

The install async operation is not related to _tenant interface v2. The former is between client and Okapi, the latter is between Okapi and a module.

Following that, the install operation will create an install "job" on the server side and return HTTP status 201 along with a location of the newly created install job. The returned JSON content is defined by schema (InstallJob.json).

This location can then be inspected with HTTP GET for the progress of the install operation. The location is same base URI as install, but with a slash + the job ID. The install job has properties such as

complete: boolean which tells whether the job has completed
id: job id
startDate: start time of job in UTC ISO8601 format.
endDate: end time of job in UTC ISO8601 format (only present when complete)
modules: enable/disable list of modules along with status.

Each module entry is defined by schema (TenantModuleDescriptor.json). Brief list of properties:

id: module ID
from: old module ID (absent if not upgrading)
action: enable/disable/uptodate
stage: the current stage of the module
message: present upon error (error message)

If message property is present, an error has occurred and stage indicates at which stage the error occurred. Stage is one of

pending: module is yet to be upgraded/deployed/etc..
deploy: module is being deployed
invoke: module is being invoked via system interface, such as _tenant, _tenantPermissions, ..
undeploy: module is being undeployed
done: module is fully upgraded

If no message property is present and stage is pending, the module upgrade has not begun yet.

If no message property is present and stage is done, the module upgrade is complete.

Note that install jobs are also created for synchronous operations (default and when using async=false). However in order to stay backwards compatible, HTTP status 200 is returned with JSON content defined by schema (TenantModuleDescriptorList.json).

All install and upgrade jobs for a tenant can be retrieved with GET to /_/proxy/tenants/tenant/install. If successful, HTTP 200 is returned with JSON content defined by schema (InstallJobList.json).

This allows to get a list of all install jobs - including ongoing ones regardless of whether they are asynchronous or not.

Ignoring errors during install

Okapi 4.2.0 and later, it is possible to ignore errors during the install and upgrade operations. This is done by supplying parameter ignoreErrors=true for install/upgrade. In this case, Okapi will try to upgrade all modules in the modules list, regardless if one of them fails. However, for individual modules, if they fail, their upgrade will not be committed.

This is an experimental parameter which was added to be able to inspect all problem(s) with module upgrade(s).

Purge module data

By default when modules are disabled, persistent data is preserved. This can be changed with the optional parameter purge, which when set to true, instructs a module to purge (remove) all persistent data. This only has an effect on modules that are also disabled ; has no effect on modules that are enabled or upgraded. The purge parameter was added in Okapi version 2.16.0.

Reference

Okapi program

The Okapi program is shipped as a bundled jar (okapi-core-fat.jar). The general invocation is:

java [java-options] -jar path/okapi-core-fat.jar command [options]

This is a standard Java command line. Of particular interest is java-option -D which may set properties for the program: see below for relevant properties. Okapi itself parses command and any options that follow.

Okapi Configuration

This configuration - a set of properties - be set as Java properties via option -D or as option -conf with filename pointing to JSON properties.

When the -D option is used, it should be in the beginning of the command-line, before the -jar.

http.port (in okapi.conf: http_port) or port: The port on which Okapi listens. Defaults to 9130.
port_start and port_end: The range of ports for modules. Default to port+1 to port+10, normally 9131 to 9141
host: Hostname to be used in the URLs returned by the deployment service. Defaults to localhost
nodename: Node name of this instance. Can be used instead of the system-generated UUID (in cluster mode), or localhost (in dev mode)
storage: Defines the storage back end, postgres, mongo or (the default) inmemory
healthPort: port for the GET /readiness and GET /liveness health checks. Use 0 to disable, this is the default. They return 204 if Okapi is ready/responsive and 500 otherwise. An alternative to check for liveness is to use /_/proxy/health on proxy port as this endpoint requires no permissions.
lang: Default language for messages returned by Okapi.
loglevel: The logging level. Defaults to INFO; other useful values are DEBUG, TRACE, WARN and ERROR.
okapiurl: Tells Okapi its own official URL. This gets passed to the modules as X-Okapi-Url header, and the modules can use this to make further requests to Okapi. Defaults to http://localhost:9130 or what ever port specified. There should be no trailing slash, but if there happens to be one, Okapi will remove it. Note that it may end with a path like in https://folio.example.com/okapi.
dockerUrl: Tells the Okapi deployment where the Docker Daemon is. Defaults to unix:///var/run/docker.sock.
dockerRegistries: List of registries to use for Docker image pull. The value is a JSON array of objects where each object may have the following properties: username, password, email, serveraddress, identitytoken and registry. The first 5 properties are passed as authentication to the Docker registry if given - refer to Docker Authentication. The optional registry is a prefix for the image to allow pull from other registry than DockerHub. The list objects are tried in the given order until the pull succeeds. An empty object in the dockerRegistries list pulls from DockerHub without authentication and can be at any list position. Omitting dockerRegistries does the same as a list with an empty object [ {} ], and is the behavior for earlier versions of Okapi with only unauthenticated DockerHub. The empty list [ ] tries zero registries and immediately fails, it disables pulling images.
containerHost: Host where containers are running (as seen from Okapi). Defaults to localhost.
postgres_host : PostgreSQL host. Defaults to localhost.
postgres_port : PostgreSQL port. Defaults to 5432.
postgres_username : PostgreSQL username. Defaults to okapi. (Don't use deprecated postgres_user that is implemented for -D only.)
postgres_password: PostgreSQL password. Defaults to okapi25.
postgres_database: PostgreSQL database. Defaults to okapi.
postgres_server_pem: SSL/TLS certificate(s) in PEM format to validate the PostgreSQL server certificate, this can be the server certificate, the root CA certificate, or the chain of the intermediate CA and the CA certificate. Defaults to none, allowing unencrypted connection only. If set, requires a TLSv1.3 connection and a valid server certificate.
log_wait_ms: Controls how often in milliseconds Okapi logs a WAIT line for ongoing request. A value of 0 disables this and is also the default.
postgres_db_init: For a value of 1, Okapi will drop existing PostgreSQL database and prepare a new one. A value of 0 (null) will leave it unmodified (default).
token_cache_max_size: Maximum number of token cache entries. Defaults to 10000.
token_cache_ttl_ms: Time to live in milliseconds for token cache entries. Defaults to 180000 (3 minutes).
deploy.waitIterations (in okapi.conf: deploy_waitIterations): Maximum number of iterations for deployment - before giving up (readiness check). Defaults to 60. A value, n, corresponds to roughly n*n*0.2 seconds. This value, if set, overrides the waitIterations in the launch descriptor.
trace_headers: Controls whether Okapi adds X-Okapi-Trace headers. The value is a boolean - true for enable, false for disable. Default is false. This property appeared in Okapi 4.10.0; trace header was always enabled before 4.10.0.
enable_system_auth: Controls whether Okapi checks token by calling Auth module when invoking system interfaces such as _tenant or via regular proxy call. The value is a boolean - true for enable, false for disable. Default is true.
kube_config: Filename/resource which is the Kubernetes configuration to use for Kubernetes integration. If defined, Okapi will perform service discovery using Kubernetes. See kubernetes section.
kube_server_url: Kubernetes API server URL. If defined, Okapi will perform service discovery using Kubernetes. see kubernetes section.
kube_server_pem: PEM file representing server certificate for Kube API server.
kube_token: Kubernetes API token. If unset, no Authorization will be provided.
kube_namespace: Kubernetes namespace to use. If omitted, default is used.
kube_refresh_interval: Time in milliseconds between Kubernetes endpoints poll. Default is 30000 (30 seconds).

Command

Okapi requires exactly one command to be given. These are:

cluster for running in clustered mode/production
dev for running in development, single-node mode
deployment for deployment only. Clustered mode
proxy for proxy + discovery. Clustered mode
help to list command-line options and commands
initdatabase drop existing data if available and initializes database
purgedatabase drop existing data and tables

Command-line options

These options are at the end of the command line:

-conf file -- Read Okapi configuration from file (JSON Object)
-hazelcast-config-cp file -- Read Hazelcast config from class path
-hazelcast-config-file file -- Read Hazelcast config from local file
-hazelcast-config-url url -- Read Hazelcast config from URL
-cluster-host ip -- Vertx cluster host
-cluster-port port -- Vertx cluster port

Logging

Okapi uses log4j2 for logging. Bundled with the Okapi program (jar) there are two log4j configurations:

log4j2.properties console/line based logger and it is the default
log4j2-json.properties JSON structured logging

Configuration can be specified with property log4j.configurationFile. For example, to enable the JSON based logging, one could use:

  java -Dlog4j.configurationFile=log4j2-json.properties -jar okapi-core-fat.jar dev

Okapi uses AsyncLoggerContextSelector by default. Use -DLog4jContextSelector=org.apache.logging.log4j.core.selector.BasicContextSelector to switch back to log4j2's default synchronous logger.

Environment Variables

Okapi offers a concept: environment variables. These are system-wide properties and provides a way to pass information to modules during deployment. For example, a module that accesses a database will need to know the connection details.

At deployment the environment variables are defined for the process to be deployed. Note that those can only be passed to modules that Okapi manages, e.g. Docker instances and processes. But not remote services defined by a URL (which are not deployed anyway).

For everything but the deployment-mode, Okapi provides CRU service under /_/env. The identifier for the service is the name of the variable. It must not include a slash and may not begin with underscore. An environment entity is defined by EnvEntry.json.

Web Service

The Okapi service requests (all those prefixed with /_/) are specified in the RAML syntax.

The top-level file, okapi.raml
Directory of RAML and included JSON Schema files
API reference documentation generated from those files

Internal Module

When Okapi starts up, it has one internal module defined. This provides two interfaces: okapi and okapi-proxy. The 'okapi' interface covers all the administrative functions, as defined in the RAML (see above). The okapi-proxy interface refers to the proxying functions. It can not be defined in the RAML, since it depends on what the modules provide. Its main use is that modules can depend on it, especially if they require some new proxying functionality. It is expected that this interface will remain fairly stable over time.

The internal module was introduced in Okapi version 1.9.0, and a fully detailed ModuleDescriptor in version 1.10.0.

Deployment

Deployment is specified by schemas DeploymentDescriptor.json and LaunchDescriptor.json. The LaunchDescriptor can be part of a ModuleDescriptor, or it can be specified in a DeploymentDescriptor.

The following methods exist for launching modules:

Process: The exec property specifies a process that stays alive and is killed (by signal) by Okapi itself.
Commands: Triggered by presence of cmdlineStart and cmdlineStop properties. The cmdlineStart is a shell script that spawns and puts a service in the background. The cmdlineStop is a shell script that terminates the corresponding service.
Docker: The dockerImage property specifies an existing image. Okapi manages a container based on this image. This option requires that the dockerUrl points to a Docker Daemon accessible via HTTP. By default Okapi will attempt to pull the image before starting it. This can be changed with boolean property dockerPull which can be set to false to prevent pull from taking place. The Dockerfile's CMD directive may be changed with property dockerCMD. This assumes that ENTRYPOINT is the full invocation of the module and that CMD is either default settings or, preferably, empty. Finally, the property dockerArgs may be used to pass Docker SDK create-container arguments. This is an object with keys such as Hostname, DomainName, User, AttachStdin, ... See for example, the v1.26 API.

For all deployment types, environment variables may be passed via the env property. This takes an array of objects specifying each environment variable. Each object has property name and value for environment variable name and value respectively.

When launching a module, a TCP listening port is assigned. The module should be listening on that port after successful deployment (serving HTTP requests). The port is passed as %p in the exec value, cmdlineStart value, and the dockerArgs properties values. For Docker deployment, Okapi will map the exposed port (EXPOSE) to the dynamically assigned port.

When starting, Docker modules can be accessed from Okapi at the host given by setting containerHost - defaults to localhost. The value of containerHost can be referred to as %c in dockerArgs properties values of the deployment.

Use %% for a literal % in dockerArgs properties values.

It is also possible to refer to an already-launched process (maybe running in your development IDE), by POSTing a DeploymentDescriptor to /_/discovery, with no nodeId and no LaunchDescriptor, but with the URL where the module is running.

Docker

Okapi uses the Docker Engine API for managing modules. Okapi can be configured to use the local socket (unix://[/path to socket]) or the HTTP TCP listener (tcp://[host]:[port][path]). Note that unix domain socket option is only available on Linux platforms and Okapi 2.36 and later.

Note that when the unix domain socket option is used, the user-ID of the Okapi process must be part of the docker group.

For earlier versions of Okapi, Docker must be listening on a TCP port in order to be used. Here's how to enable it on port 4243, on a systemd based host:

/lib/systemd/system/docker.service must be adjusted and the ExecStart line should include the -H option with a tcp listening host+port. For example -H tcp://127.0.0.1:4243 .

vi /lib/systemd/system/docker.service
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart docker

Kubernetes integration

Since version 4.13.0 Okapi has support for service discovery with Kubernetes.

The Kubernetes service discovery is enabled as soon as a Kubernetes server is specified. This can be given implicitly by a reference to a Kubernetes config file with option kube_config or as config option kube_server_url.

In some cases, it's necessary to specify server cerficate for the Kubernetes API server. This is done by kube_server_pem. With microk8s that's /var/snap/microk8s/current/certs/server.crt.

Okapi uses the Kubernetes service API to get information about endpoints of modules. These endpoints will be populated to Okapi discovery sub-system in a "refresh" operation. The refresh operation removes and adds relevant services. The Kubernetes discovered services have instId kube_ prefix, so that services otherwise manually added to the Okapi are preserved by the refresh operation.

The refresh operation happens periodically and at certain important stages, such as before an install operation takes place and when Okapi starts.

Only services with labels app.kubernetes.io/name and app.kubernetes.io/version are considered. Other entries are ignored. Okapi may discover services that are not Okapi modules with this strategy. In principle Okapi discovery could be populated with non-Okapi modules with this way, but they will never be used for anything as no tenant would be enabled for a non-existing module.

Example of service that would be considered by Okapi:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: mod-users
  labels:
    run: mod-users
    app.kubernetes.io/name: mod-users
    app.kubernetes.io/version: 18.1.0
spec:
  ports:
    - name: http
      port: 8081
      protocol: TCP
  selector:
    app: mod-users

The first port with name http/https is used in discovery. Remaining ports are not considered, the assumption being that the module is listening on other ports for other "non-API" services.

System Interfaces

Modules can provide system interfaces, and Okapi can make requests to those in some well defined situations. By convention these interfaces have names that start with an underscore.

At the moment we have two system interfaces defined, but in time we may get a few more.

Tenant Interface

If a module provides a system interface called _tenant, Okapi invokes that interface every time a module gets enabled for a tenant. The request contains information about the newly enabled module, and optionally of some module that got disabled at the same time, for example when a module is being upgraded. The module can use this information to upgrade or initialize its database, and do any kind of housekeeping it needs.

For the specifics, see under .../okapi/okapi-core/src/main/raml/raml-util the files ramls/tenant.raml and schemas/tenantAttributes.schema. The okapi-test-module has a very trivial implementation of this, and the moduleTest shows a module Descriptor that defines this interface.

The tenant interface was introduced in Okapi version 1.0

TenantPermissions Interface

When a module gets enabled for a tenant, Okapi also attempts to locate a module that provides the _tenantPermissions interface, and invoke that. Typically this would be provided by the permission module. It gets a structure that contains the module to be enabled, and all the permissionSets from the moduleDescriptor. The purpose of this is to load the permissions and permission sets into the permission module, so that they can be assigned to users, or used in other permission sets.

Unless you are writing a permission module, you should never need to provide this interface.

The service should be idempotent, since it may get called again, if something went wrong with enabling the module. It should start by deleting all permissions and permission sets for the named module, and then insert those it received in the request. That way it will clean up permissions that may have been introduced in some older version of the module, and are no longer used.

The okapi-test-header-module has a very trivial implementation of this, and the moduleTest shows a module Descriptor that defines this interface.

The tenantPermissions interface was introduced in Okapi version 1.1

Timer Interface

A module may be called periodically by Okapi. The module must provide a system interface called _timer - version 1.0. The path or pathPattern can be any fixed string (no pattern). Okapi will use that in the call to the module. The request body is empty. The first method in the methods array is used in the call along with the path. So it only makes sense to specify one method in the method list.

The routing entry must also include two properties, unit and delay, where unit is one of millisecond, second, minute, hour, day.

The snippet below is an example of a module that gets POST /testb/1 every 5 minutes and POST /testb/2 every half hour.

{
  "id": "test-basic-1.0.0",
  "name": "Okapi test module",
  "provides": [
...
    {
      "id": "_timer",
      "version": "1.0",
      "interfaceType": "system",
      "handlers": [
        {
          "methods": [ "POST" ],
          "pathPattern": "/testb/1",
          "unit": "minute",
          "delay": "5"
        }, {
          "methods": [ "POST" ],
          "pathPattern": "/testb/2",
          "unit": "minute",
          "delay": "30"
        }
      ]
    }

Note that the call made by Okapi will call auth-token to get a token for the tenant this module is enabled for. No user is involved in this. Use modulePermissions to grant permissions for the token.

With Okapi 4.8.0, the timers can also be specified to occur at given times. This is triggered by suppying a schedule object. This object only supports one property cron with a string value that is a crontab entry. For example:

    {
      "id": "_timer",
      "version": "1.0",
      "interfaceType": "system",
      "handlers": [
        {
          "methods": [ "POST" ],
          "pathPattern": "/testb/1",
          "schedule": {
            "cron": "0 6,18 * * *",
            "zone": "CET"
          }
        }
      ]
    }

The cron value consists of 5 tokens, separated by whitespace. The tokens in order are:

minute 0-59
hour 0-23
day of month 1-31, doesn't execute in months without that day
month 1-12, 1=jan, 2=feb, 3=mar, .., 12=dec
weekday 0-7, where 0=sun, 1=mon, 2=tue, .., 6=sat, 7=sun

Time is in UTC by default if zoneis omitted, but in the example above time is given in CET (Central European Time). Month and weekday names are case insensitive.

Examples:

Schedule	Description
`0 2 * * *`	every day at 2 AM
`15 /2 * *`	quarter past every 2nd hour
`0 6,18 * * *`	6 AM + 6 PM
`0 0 * * sun`	midnight between Saturday and Sunday

See crontab man page for more information.

The zone value is that of Java's ZoneId class. Examples

UTC
GMT-04:00
GMT+02:00
America/New_York - from TZDB.

Timer management

Okapi 4.8.0 provides service calls managing the time configuration for routing entries that provides the _timer interface. This allows inspecting the timer entries and modifying them - including disabling a timer.

These services all have the prefix /_/proxy/tenants/{tenant}/timers. Consult the RAML for details.

When a module is upgraded and a timer is un-modified, it will change to new value in new module descriptor (existing behavior since timers were introduced).

When a module is upgraded and a timer is modified, the timer will stay in its current "modified" state.

Timers are saved to permanent storage when modified (with HTTP PATCH).

If a module is disabled or the timers disappear in new definitions, timers are removed from persistent storage.

As an example of using timers, consider the okapi-test-module. It has a routing entry with timers. See the template module descriptor. When okapi-test-module is "installed", the target directory should have a "final" module descriptor ModuleDescriptorTimer.json.

Start okapi in a separate teminal and then enable it:

cd okapi-test-module/target
curl -d'{"id":"testlib"}' http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants
curl -d@ModuleDescriptorTimer.json http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/modules
curl -d'[{"id":"test-timer","action":"enable"}]' \
   http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/install?deploy=true

The module should now be running. It has 3 timers. List them with:

curl http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/timers

The first entry fires a timer every 20 seconds. Disable it with:

curl -XPATCH -d'{"id":"test-timer_0","routingEntry":{"delay":"0"}}' \
    http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/timers

Alternative call with timer ID in path:

curl -XPATCH -d'{"delay":"0"}' \
    http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/timers/test-timer_0

Instrumentation

Okapi uses Micrometer for managing metrics and reporting to backends. To enable it, add Java parameter -Dvertx.metrics.options.enabled=true first.

More Java parameters are needed to configure which backends to use

-DinfluxDbOptions='{"uri": "http://localhost:8086", "db":"folio"}' - Send metrics to InfluxDB
-DprometheusOptions='{"embeddedServerOptions": {"port": 9930}}' - Expose <server>:9930/metrics for Prometheus
-DjmxMetricsOptions='{"domain": "org.folio"}' - JMX

Another Java parameter can be used to filter metrics

-DmetricsPrefixFilter=org.folio - Will only report metrics with name starting org.folio

A full example with all backends enabled and filter parameter configured:

java -Dvertx.metrics.options.enabled=true \
  -DinfluxDbOptions='{"uri": "http://localhost:8086", "db":"folio"}' \
  -DprometheusOptions='{"embeddedServerOptions": {"port": 9930}}' \
  -DjmxMetricsOptions='{"domain": "org.folio"}' \
  -DmetricsPrefixFilter=org.folio \
  -jar okapi-core/target/okapi-core-fat.jar dev

Module Reference

This section tries to summarize all the things a module author should know when creating a module. Like so much else, it is still under construction. We hope that we will get enough material here to make it worthwhile to separate the section into a stand-alone guide document.

This section concentrates on regular modules that offer regular web services. Special modules, filters, and authentication is mostly omitted.

There is a lot of useful information in the Okapi guide. See for example

Versioning and Dependencies
Status Codes

Life cycle of a module

A module goes through a number of different stages in its life.

Deployment

This means somehow starting the process that listens on a given port. There are many ways to deploy modules, but the end result is that the process starts running. Most of the time the deployment is managed by Okapi, but can also be managed by some external entity that is not within the scope of this guide.

There are a few points worth noticing at this stage:

The module is supposed to be running on a node on a cluster, so it should not use any local storage.
There can be multiple instances of the module running, on different nodes, or even the same one.
Okapi will happily deploy different versions of the same module, even on the same node.
When starting up, the module should not be doing much more than setting up its HTTP listener, and that kind of things. Most of all, it should not be initializing any databases, see "enabling" below.

Enabling for a tenant

When a module is enabled for a tenant, Okapi checks if there is a _tenant interface provided for the module. If that it is defined, Okapi makes a HTTP POST to /_/tenant for _tenant interface version 1.0 and later. This is where the module may initialize its database if necessary (for that one tenant), etc. With the POST request a JSON object is passed: member module_to being the module ID that is enabled.

Refer to tenant.raml for the RAML definition.

The curl command below does what Okapi performs when enabling a tenant testlib for module mod-foo-1.0.0, on localhost, port 8081. The parameters section specifies loadReference to specify that reference data are also to be created during the operation.

curl -HX-Okapi-url:http://localhost:8081 -HX-Okapi-Tenant:testlib \
  -d'{"module_to":"mod-foo-1.0.0", "parameters":[{"key":"loadReference", "value":"true"}]}' \
  -HContent-Type:application/json "-HAccept:*/*" \
  http://localhost:8081/_/tenant

Add 'loadSample=true` to parameters, to load sample data as well.

This is what Okapi calls as part of an install similar to:

curl -d'[{"id":"mod-foo-1.0.0", "action":"enable"}]' \
  http://localhost:9130/_/proxy/tenants/testlib/install?tenantParameters=loadReference%3Dtrue

If the module supports version 2 of the _tenant interface the module may either return 204 (No Content) if job is successfully completed. If the module chooses to perform the tenant operation asynchronously, it returns 201 (Created) with Location header. For example:

Location: /_/tenant/6da99bac-457b-499f-89a4-34f4da8e9be8

This signals that the tenant job has started. Use a GET request on the Location path returned to poll for the completion of the tenant job with the

curl -H "X-Okapi-url: http://localhost:8081" -H "X-Okapi-Tenant: testlib" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Accept: */*" \
  http://localhost:8081/_/tenant/6da99bac-457b-499f-89a4-34f4da8e9be8

(substitute above path with the Location returned)

Upgrading

When a module is upgraded to a new version, it happens separately for each tenant. Some tenants may not wish to upgrade in the middle of a busy season, others may want to have everything in the latest version. The process starts by Okapi deploying the new version of the module, while the old one is running too. Then various tenants can upgrade to the new version, one at a time.

The actual upgrade happens by Okapi disabling the old version of the module, and enabling the new one, in the same call. Okapi makes a POST request with path /_/tenant if version 1.0 or later of interface _tenant is provided. With the POST request, a JSON object is passed: member module_from being the module ID that we are upgrading 'from' and member module_to being the module ID that we are upgrading 'to'. Note that the Module Descriptor of the target module (module_to) is being used for the call.

We are using semantic versioning, see Versioning and Dependencies

Disabling

For tenant interface 1.1/1.2, when a module is disabled for a tenant, Okapi makes a POST request with path /_/tenant/disable. The request body is a JSON object where property module_from is the module ID that is being disabled.

For tenant interface 2.0, when a module is disabled, Okapi makes a POST request with path /_/tenant/ with module_from property being the module that is disabled and module_to omitted.

Purge

Purge is like disable, but purges persistent content too for a module.

For tenant interfaces 1.1 and 1.2, this is performed by a DELETE request to the module.

For tenant interface 2.0, this is performed exactly like disable, but with purge property being true of the JSON content posted.

Tenant Parameters

A module may, besides doing the fundamental initialization of storage etc. also load sets of reference data. This can be controlled by supplying tenant parameters. These are properties (key-value pairs) that are passed to the module when enabled or upgraded. Passing those are only performed when tenantParameters is specified for install and when the tenant interface is version 1.2 and later.

In FOLIO two such parameters are widely recognized:

loadReference with value true loads reference data.
loadSample with value true loads sample data.

Tenant Interface definitions

A module supporting 1.1/1.2 of the _tenant interface should use this snippet in the module descriptor:

   "id" : "_tenant",
   "version" : "1.2",
   "interfaceType" : "system",
   "handlers" : [ {
       "methods" : [ "POST", "DELETE" ],
       "pathPattern" : "/_/tenant"
      }, {
       "methods" : [ "POST" ],
       "pathPattern" : "/_/tenant/disable"
      }
   ]

The corresponding RAML definition: tenant.raml

Snippet of version 2.0 of the _tenant interface:

   "id" : "_tenant",
   "version" : "2.0",
   "interfaceType" : "system",
   "handlers" : [ {
       "methods" : [ "POST" ],
       "pathPattern" : "/_/tenant"
      }, {
       "methods" : [ "GET", "DELETE" ],
       "pathPattern" : "/_/tenant/{id}"
      }
   ]

The corresponding RAML definition: tenant.raml

Closing down

When Okapi is closing down, it will close the modules too. When starting up, those will be restarted. As a module author, you should not worry too much about that.

HTTP

One of the main design criteria for FOLIO is to base things on RESTful HTTP services, using JSON for our data transport. This section describes some details about the way we should handle HTTP. (TODO...)

HTTP status codes

See Status Codes.

X-Okapi headers

Okapi uses various X-Okapi headers for passing additional information between the client making the request, Okapi itself, and the module serving the request, as well as when the module wants to make further requests to other modules (via Okapi), and when the module returns its response to Okapi, and from there to the client. There are also special headers for the communication between the auth module(s) and Okapi, but we can ignore them here.

Here is a quick list of the most relevant headers:

X-Okapi-Token Authentication token. Carries the tenant and user Ids, and some permissions.
X-Okapi-Tenant The tenant Id we operate as. UUID
X-Okapi-User-Id The UUID of the logged-in user
X-Okapi-Url The base URL of the Okapi installation. For example http://localhost:9130. This can also point to a load balancer in front to Okapi, all you need to know is to use this when making further requests to other modules. The base URL can end with a path like https://folio.example.com/okapi to ensure that hostname and port match those of the frontend URL https://folio.example.com avoiding preflight CORS HTTP OPTIONS requests.
X-Okapi-Request-Id The Id of the current request, for example "821257/user;744931/perms", which tells that this was request 821257 to /users/... which made a request 744931 to /perms/... The numbers are just random, picked when Okapi sees the request.
X-Okapi-Trace A module may return this to add trace and timing info to the response headers, so the client can see where the request ended up, and how long various parts took. For example GET sample-module-1.0.0 http://localhost:9231/testb : 204 3748us
X-Okapi-Permissions Permissions that the module desires, and that have been granted. (Note that if a module strictly requires a permission, and it is not granted, the request will never reach the module. These are only for special cases, like including sensitive data about a user, which the module can handle on its own).

The full list is in X-Okapi-Headers.java. If writing your module in Java, it is recommended you refer to this file, instead of defining your own. That way, you also get the Javadoc for them.

When the UI, or other client program makes a request to Okapi, it needs to pass the X-Okapi-Token header along. It should have received one when it made a call to authn/login. (Side note: At the login request, and some other special cases, like early stages of setting up an installation, the client does not have that X-Okapi-Token yet. In such cases it should pass a X-Okapi-Tenant header instead, to tell which tenant it is acting as.) The client may choose to pass the token in the more standard Authorization header instead.

The client may also pass a X-Okapi-Request-Id header along. This will help debugging by tying Okapi's log entries to the various requests. Especially useful if one operation in the UI requires multiple requests to the back end modules. All requests should pass the same Id, Okapi will distinguish them by appending its own Id to each. For example 123456/disable-user, where the prefix is a random number, and the string is a very short description of the operation.

Before Okapi passes the request to the actual module, it does all kind of things. It asks the auth filter to validate the X-Okapi-Token header, and to extract various bits of information from it. Okapi passes the following headers to the module: X-Okapi-Token, X-Okapi-Tenant, X-Okapi-User-Id, X-Okapi-Url, X-Okapi-Request-Id, X-Okapi-Permissions. (Side note: The X-Okapi-Request-Id header is a new one, but will contain the value from the header Okapi received. Likewise, the X-Okapi-Token header is likely to be different from the one passed to Okapi, it may contain module-specific permissions etc.)

If the module wishes to make a request to some other module, it should address it to the base URL from X-Okapi-Url, combined with the path it needs to access. It should pass along at least the X-Okapi-Token, and preferably also the X-Okapi-Request-Id. In many cases it is easier to pass all X-Okapi headers along - Okapi will drop those that could confuse things.

When the module receives a response from the other module, it would be nice it it could pass all X-Okapi-Trace headers into its own response. That helps the client to debug its code, by listing all the requests that were made during the process, and how long each took. But this is not strictly necessary.

When the module returns its response, it does not need to pass any headers to Okapi, but it may pass one or two X-Okapi-Trace headers of its own. It has been a tradition that a module copies all X-Okapi headers from its request into its response. This is perfectly acceptable, but in no way necessary.

When Okapi passes the response to the client, it will pass all X-Okapi headers mentioned above. It may remove some of the headers it uses internally.

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Okapi Guide and Reference

Introduction

Architecture

Okapi's own Web Services

What are 'modules'?

API guidelines

Core Okapi Web Service Authentication and Authorization

Deployment and Discovery

Request Processing

Status Codes

Header Merging Rules

Versioning and Dependencies

Version numbers

Security

Open Issues

Caching

Instrumentation and Analytics

Response Aggregation

Asynchronous messaging

Compiling and Running

Using Okapi

Storage

Curl examples

Example modules

Okapi-test-module

Okapi-test-header-module

Okapi-test-auth-module

Running Okapi itself

Example 1: Deploying and using a simple module

Deploying the test-basic module

Deploying the module

Creating a tenant

Enabling the module for our tenant

Calling the module

Another way

Example 2: Adding the Auth module

Example 3: Upgrading, versions, environment, and the _tenant interface

Example 4: Complete ModuleDescriptor

Permissions and the _tenantPermissions Interface

Optional interfaces

Multiple interfaces

Cleaning up

Running in cluster mode

On a single machine

On separate machines

Naming nodes

So, you have a cluster

Securing Okapi

Module Descriptor Sharing

Pull Operation Example

Install modules per tenant

Install Operation Example

install parameter preRelease

install parameter tenantParameters

install parameter invoke

Upgrading modules per tenant

Auto-deployment

Install jobs and asynchronous operations

Ignoring errors during install

Purge module data

Reference

Okapi program

Okapi Configuration

Command

Command-line options

Logging

Environment Variables

Web Service

Internal Module

Deployment

Docker

Kubernetes integration

System Interfaces

Tenant Interface

Example 3: Upgrading, versions, environment, and the `_tenant` interface

Permissions and the `_tenantPermissions` Interface