Deployment Options

Red Hat 3scale API Management 2.3

Deploy APIcast API Gateway on OpenShift, natively, or using Docker.

Red Hat Customer Content Services

Abstract

This guide documents deployment options for Red Hat 3scale API Management 2.3.

Chapter 1. APIcast Overview

APIcast is an NGINX based API gateway used to integrate your internal and external API services with the Red Hat 3scale Platform.

The latest released and supported version of APIcast is 2.0.

In this guide you will learn more about deployment options, environments provided, and how to get started.

1.1. Prerequisites

APIcast is not a standalone API gateway, it needs connection to 3scale API Manager.

1.2. Deployment options

You can use APIcast hosted or self-managed, in both cases, it needs connection to the rest of the 3scale API management platform:

  • APIcast hosted: 3scale hosts APIcast in the cloud. In this case, APIcast is already deployed for you and it is limited to 50,000 calls per day.
  • APIcast built-in: Two APIcast (staging and production) come by default with the 3scale API Management Platform (AMP) installation. They come pre-configured and ready to use out-of-the-box.
  • APIcast self-managed: You can deploy APIcast wherever you want. The self-managed mode is the intended mode of operation for production environments. Here are a few recommended options to deploy APIcast:

    • the Docker containerized environment: Download a ready to use Docker-formatted container image, which includes all of the dependencies to run APIcast in a Docker-formatted container.
    • OpenShift: Run APIcast on a supported version of OpenShift. You can connect self-managed APIcasts both to a Red Hat 3scale on-premise installation or to a 3scale hosted account.

1.3. Environments

By default, when you create a 3scale account, you get APIcast hosted in two different environments:

  • Staging: Intended to be used only while configuring and testing your API integration. When you have confirmed that your setup is working as expected, then you can choose to deploy it to the production environment.
  • Production: Limited to 50,000 calls per day and supports the following out-of-the-box authentication options: API key, and App ID and App key pair.

1.4. API configuration

Follow the next steps to configure APIcast in no time.

1.5. Configuring the integration settings

Go to the Dashboard → API tab and click on the Integration link. If you have more than one API in your account, you will need to select the API first.

The integration options are displayed on the Integration page, in the upper right-hand side. By default, the deployment option is APIcast hosted, and the authentication mode is API key. You can change these settings by clicking on edit integration settings in the top right corner. Note that OAuth 2.0 authentication is only available for the self-managed deployment.

1.6. Configuring your service

You will need to declare your API backend in the Private Base URL field, which is the endpoint host of your API backend. APIcast will redirect all traffic to your API backend after all authentication, authorization, rate limits and statistics have been processed.

Typically, the Private Base URL of your API will be something like https://api-backend.yourdomain.com:443, on the domain that you manage (yourdomain.com). For instance, if you were integrating with the Twitter API the Private Base URL would be https://api.twitter.com/. In this example will use the Echo API hosted by 3scale – a simple API that accepts any path and returns information about the request (path, request parameters, headers, etc.). Its Private Base URL is https://echo-api.3scale.net:443.

Private Base URL

Test that your private (unmanaged) API is working. For example, for the Echo API we can make the following call with the curl command:

curl "https://echo-api.3scale.net:443"

You will get the following response:

{
    "method": "GET",
    "path": "/",
    "args": "",
    "body": "",
    "headers": {
      "HTTP_VERSION": "HTTP/1.1",
      "HTTP_HOST": "echo-api.3scale.net",
      "HTTP_ACCEPT": "*/*",
      "HTTP_USER_AGENT": "curl/7.51.0",
      "HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR": "2.139.235.79, 10.0.103.58",
      "HTTP_X_FORWARDED_HOST": "echo-api.3scale.net",
      "HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PORT": "443",
      "HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO": "https",
      "HTTP_FORWARDED": "for=10.0.103.58;host=echo-api.3scale.net;proto=https"
    },
    "uuid": "ee626b70-e928-4cb1-a1a4-348b8e361733"
  }

Once you have confirmed that your API is working, you will need to configure the test call for the hosted staging environment. Enter a path existing in your API in the API test GET request field (for example, /v1/word/good.json).

Save the settings by clicking on the Update & Test Staging Configuration button in the bottom right part of the page. This will deploy the APIcast configuration to the 3scale hosted staging environment. If everything is configured correctly, the vertical line on the left should turn green.

1.6.1. Configuring the authentication settings

If you are using one of the self-managed deployment options, save the configuration from the GUI and make sure it is pointing to your deployed API gateway by adding the correct host in the staging or production Public base URL field. Before making any calls to your production gateway, click on the Promote v.x to Production button.

Find the sample curl at the bottom of the staging section and run it from the console:

curl "https://XXX.staging.apicast.io:443/v1/word/good.json?user_key=YOUR_USER_KEY"
Note

You should get the same response as above, however, this time the request will go through the 3scale hosted APIcast instance. Note: You must have an application with valid credentials for the service. If you are using the default API service created on sign up to 3scale, you should already have an application. Otherwise, if you see USER_KEY or APP_ID and APP_KEY values in the test curl, you need to create an application for this service first.

Now you have your API integrated with 3scale.

3scale hosted APIcast gateway does the validation of the credentials and applies the rate limits that you defined for the application plan of the application. If you try to make a call without credentials, or with invalid credentials, you will see an error message. The code and the text of the message can be configured, check out the Advanced APIcast configuration article for more information.

1.7. Mapping rules

The mapping rules define which metrics (and methods) you want to report depending on the requests to your API.

By default we start with a very simple mapping rule,

Mapping Rules

This rule means that any GET request that starts with / will increment the metric hits by 1. This mapping rule will match any request to your API. Most likely you will change this rule since it is too generic.

APIcast fetches the parameters in the following ways:

  • For a GET method: APIcast fetches the parameters from the query string.
  • For any of these methods (POST, DELETE, PUT): APIcast fetches the parameters from the body.

Parameters can also have named wildcards. Wildcards can appear between slashes or between slash and dot.

For instance, below you can see the rules for the Echo API:

Hello World Mapping Rules

Mapping rules can also include parameters on the query string or in the body: /{word}?value={value}.

The matching of the rules is done by prefix and can be arbitrarily complex (the notation follows Swagger and ActiveDocs specification)

  • You can do a match on the path over a literal string: /hello
  • Mapping rules can contain named wildcards: /{word}

This rule will match anything in the placeholder {word}, making requests like /morning match the rule.

Note that all mapping rules are evaluated. There is no precedence (order does not matter). If we added a rule /v1 to the example on the figure above, it would always be matched for the requests whose path starts with /v1 regardless if it is /v1/word or /v1/sentence. Keep in mind that if two different rules increment the same metric by one, and the two rules are matched, the metric will be incremented by two.

1.8. Mapping rules workflow

The intended workflow to define mapping rules is as follows:

  • You can add new rules by clicking the Add Mapping Rule button. Then you select an HTTP method, a pattern, a metric (or method) and finally its increment. When you are done, click Update & Test Staging Configuration to apply the changes.
  • Mapping rules will be grayed out on the next reload to prevent accidental modifications.
  • To edit an existing mapping rule you must enable it first by clicking the pencil icon on the right.
  • To delete a rule click on the trash icon.
  • Modifications and deletions will be saved when you hit the Update & Test Staging Configuration button.

For more advanced configuration options, you can check the APIcast advanced configuration tutorial.

1.9. Host Header

This option is only needed for those API backends that reject traffic unless the Host header matches the expected one. In these cases, having a gateway in front of your API backend will cause problems since the Host will be the one of the gateway, e.g. xxx-yyy.staging.apicast.io

To avoid this issue you can define the host your API backend expects in the Host Header field in the Authentication Settings, and the hosted APIcast instance will rewrite the host.

Host Rewrite

1.10. Production deployment

Once you have configured your API integration and verified it is working in the Staging environment, you can go ahead with one of the APIcast production deployments. See the Deployment options in the beginning of this article.

At the bottom of the Integration page you will find the Production section. You will find two fields here: the Private Base URL, which will be the same as you configured in the Staging section, and the Public Base URL.

1.11. Public Base URL

The Public Base URL is the URL, which your developers will use to make requests to your API, protected by 3scale. This will be the URL of your APIcast instance.

In APIcast hosted, the Public Base URL is set by 3scale and cannot be changed.

If you are using one of the self-managed deployment options, you can choose your own Public Base URL for each one of the environments provided (staging and production), on a domain name you are managing. Note that this URL should be different from the one of your API backend, and could be something like https://api.yourdomain.com:443, where yourdomain.com is the domain that belongs to you. After setting the Public Base URL make sure you save the changes and, if necessary, promote the changes in staging to production.

Please note that APIcast v2 will only accept calls to the hostname which is specified in the Public Base URL. For example, if for the Echo API used as an example above, we specify https://echo-api.3scale.net:443 as the Public Base URL, the correct call would be be:

curl "https://echo-api.3scale.net:443/hello?user_key=YOUR_USER_KEY"

In case you do not yet have a public domain for your API, you can also use the APIcast IP in the requests, but you still need to specify a value in the Public Base URL field (even if the domain is not real), and in this case make sure you provide the host in the Host header, for example:

curl "http://192.0.2.12:80/hello?user_key=YOUR_USER_KEY" -H "Host: echo-api.3scale.net"

If you are deploying on local machine, you can also just use "localhost" as the domain, so the Public Base URL will look like http://localhost:80, and then you can make requests like this:

curl "http://localhost:80/hello?user_key=YOUR_USER_KEY"

In case you have multiple API services, you will need to set this Public Base URL appropriately for each service. APIcast will route the requests based on the hostname.

1.12. Protecting your API backend

Once you have APIcast working in production, you might want to restrict direct access to your API backend without credentials. The easiest way to do this is by using the Secret Token set by APIcast. Please refer to the Advanced APIcast configuration for information on how to set it up.

1.13. Using APIcast with private APIs

With APIcast, you can protect the APIs that are not publicly accessible from the Internet. The requirements are as follows:

  • APIcast self-managed must be used as the deployment option.
  • APIcast needs to be accessible from the public Internet and be able to make outbound calls to the 3scale Service Management API.
  • The API backend should be accessible by APIcast.

In this case you can set your internal domain name or the IP address of your API in the Private Base URL field and follow the rest of the steps as usual. Note, however, that you will not be able to take advantage of the Staging environment, and the test calls will not be successful, as the Staging APIcast instance is hosted by 3scale and will not have access to your private API backend). But once you deploy APIcast in your production environment, if the configuration is correct, APIcast will work as expected.

1.14. Configuring APIcast with OpenTracing

OpenTracing is an API specification and method used to profile and monitor microservices. From version 3.3 onwards, APIcast includes OpenTracing Libraries and the Jaeger Tracer library.

1.14.1. Prerequisites

To add distributed tracing to your APIcast deployment, you need to ensure the following prerequisites:

  • Each external request should have a unique request ID attached, usually via a HTTP header.
  • Each service should forward the request ID to other services.
  • Each service should output the request ID in the logs.
  • Each service should record additional information, like start and end time of the request.
  • Logs need to be aggregated, and provide a way to parse via HTTP request ID.

1.14.2. Procedure

To configure OpenTracing, use the following environment variables:

  • OPENTRACING_TRACER: To define which tracer implementation to use. Currently, only Jaeger is available.
  • OPENTRACING_CONFIG: To specify the default configuration file of your tracer. You can see an example here.
  • OPENTRACING_HEADER_FORWARD: Optional. You can set this environment variable according to your OpenTracing configuration.

For more information about these variables, refer to APIcast environment variables.

To test if the integration is properly working, you need to check if traces are reported in the Jaeger tracing interface.

1.14.3. Additional information

The OpenTracing and Jaeger integration are available in the upstream project: https://github.com/3scale/apicast

1.14.4. Installing Jaeger on your OpenShift instance

This section provides information about the installation of Jaeger on the OpenShift instance you are running.

Warning

Jaeger is a third-party component, which 3scale does not provide support for, with the exception of uses with APIcast. The following instructions are provided as a reference example only, and are not suitable for production use.

  1. Install the Jaeger all-in-one in the current namespace:

    oc process -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jaegertracing/jaeger-openshift/master/all-in-one/jaeger-all-in-one-template.yml | oc create -f -
  2. Create a Jaeger configuration file jaeger_config.json and add the following:

    {
        "service_name": "apicast",
        "disabled": false,
        "sampler": {
          "type": "const",
          "param": 1
        },
        "reporter": {
          "queueSize": 100,
          "bufferFlushInterval": 10,
          "logSpans": false,
          "localAgentHostPort": "jaeger-agent:6831"
        },
        "headers": {
          "jaegerDebugHeader": "debug-id",
          "jaegerBaggageHeader": "baggage",
          "TraceContextHeaderName": "uber-trace-id",
          "traceBaggageHeaderPrefix": "testctx-"
        },
        "baggage_restrictions": {
            "denyBaggageOnInitializationFailure": false,
            "hostPort": "127.0.0.1:5778",
            "refreshInterval": 60
        }
     }
    • set a sampler constant of 1 to sample all requests
    • set the location and queue size of the reporter
    • set headers, including TraceContextHeaderName which we will use to track requests
  3. Create a ConfigMap from our Jaeger configuration file and mount it into APIcast:

    oc create configmap jaeger-config --from-file=jaeger_config.json
    oc volume dc/apicast --add -m /tmp/jaeger/ --configmap-name jaeger-config
  4. Enable OpenTracing and Jaeger with the configuration we have just added:

    oc env deploymentConfig/apicast OPENTRACING_TRACER=jaeger OPENTRACING_CONFIG=/tmp/jaeger/jaeger_config.json
  5. Find the URL the Jaeger interface is running on:

    oc get route
    (…) jaeger-query-myproject.127.0.0.1.nip.io
  6. Open the Jaeger interface from the previous step, which shows data being populated from Openshift Health checks.
  7. The final step is to add OpenTracing and Jaeger support to your backend APIs so that you can see the complete request trace. This varies in each back end, depending on the frameworks and languages used. As a reference example, you can see Using OpenTracing with Jaeger to collect Application Metrics in Kubernetes.

For more information on configuring Jaeger, see: * Jaeger on OpenShift development setup * Jaeger on OpenShift production setup * Distributed tracing on OpenShift Service Mesh

Chapter 2. APIcast Hosted

Once you complete this tutorial, you’ll have your API fully protected by a secure gateway in the cloud.

APIcast hosted is the best deployment option if you want to launch your API as fast as possible, or if you want to make the minimum infrastructure changes on your side.

2.1. Prerequisites

  • You have reviewed the deployment alternatives and decided to use APIcast hosted to integrate your API with 3scale.
  • Your API backend service is accessible over the public Internet (a secure communication will be established to prevent users from bypassing the access control gateway).
  • You do not expect demand for your API to exceed the limit of 50,000 hits/day (beyond this, we recommend upgrading to the self-managed gateway).

2.2. Step 1: Deploy your API with APIcast hosted in a staging environment

The first step is to configure your API and test it in your staging environment. Define the private base URL and its endpoints, choose the placement of credentials and other configuration details that you can read about here. Once you’re done entering your configuration, go ahead and click on Update & Test Staging Environment button to run a test call that will go through the APIcast staging instance to your API.

Setting up your API in the APIcast staging

If everything was configured correctly, you should see a green confirmation message.

Before moving on to the next step, make sure that you have configured a secret token to be validated by your backend service. You can define the value for the secret token under Authentication Settings. This will ensure that nobody can bypass APIcast’s access control.

2.3. Step 2: Deploy your API with the APIcast hosted into production

At this point, you’re ready to take your API configuration to a production environment. To deploy your 3scale-hosted APIcast instance, go back to the 'Integration and Configuration' page and click on the 'Promote to v.x to Production' button. Repeat this step to promote further changes in your staging environment to your production environment.

APIcast promote changes to production

It will take between 5 and 7 minutes for your configuration to deploy and propagate to all the cloud APIcast instances. During redeployment, your API will not experience any downtime. However, API calls may return different responses depending on which instance serves the call. You’ll know it has been deployed once the box around your production environment has turned green.

Both the staging and production APIcast instances have base URLs on the apicast.io domain. You can easily tell them apart because the staging environment URLs have a staging subdomain. For example:

2.3.1. Bear in mind

  • 50,000 hits/day is the maximum allowed for your API through the APIcast production cloud instance. You can check your API usage in the Analytics section of your Admin Portal.
  • There is a hard throttle limit of 20 hits/second on any spike in API traffic.
  • Above the throttle limit, APIcast returns a response code of 403. This is the same as the default for an application over rate limits. If you want to differentiate the errors, please check the response body.

Chapter 3. APIcast on the Docker containerized environment

This is a step-by-step guide to deploy APIcast inside a Docker-formatted container ready to be used as a 3scale API gateway.

3.1. Prerequisites

You must configure APIcast in your 3scale Admin Portal as per the APIcast Overview.

3.2. Step 1: Install the Docker containerized environment

This guide covers the steps to set up the Docker containerized environment on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.

Docker-formatted containers provided by Red Hat are released as part of the Extras channel in RHEL. To enable additional repositories, you can use either the Subscription Manager or the yum config manager. For details, see the RHEL product documentation.

To deploy RHEL 7 on an AWS EC2 instance, take the following steps:

  1. List all repositories: sudo yum repolist all.
  2. Find the *-extras repository.
  3. Enable the extras repository: sudo yum-config-manager --enable rhui-REGION-rhel-server-extras.
  4. Install the Docker containerized environment package: sudo yum install docker.

For other operating systems, refer to the following Docker documentation:

3.3. Step 2: Run the Docker containerized environment gateway

  1. Start the Docker daemon: sudo systemctl start docker.service.
  2. Check if the Docker daemon is running: sudo systemctl status docker.service. You can download a ready to use Docker-formatted container image from the Red Hat registry: sudo docker pull registry.access.redhat.com/3scale-amp23/apicast-gateway.
  3. Run APIcast in a Docker-formatted container: sudo docker run --name apicast --rm -p 8080:8080 -e THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT=https://<access_token>@<domain>-admin.3scale.net registry.access.redhat.com/3scale-amp23/apicast-gateway.

    Here, <access_token> is the Access Token for the 3scale Account Management API. You can use the the Provider Key instead of the access token. <domain>-admin.3scale.net is the URL of your 3scale admin portal.

This command runs a Docker-formatted container called "apicast" on port 8080 and fetches the JSON configuration file from your 3scale portal. For other configuration options, see the APIcast Overview guide.

3.3.1. The Docker command options

You can use the following options with the docker run command:

  • --rm: Automatically removes the container when it exits.
  • -d or --detach: Runs the container in the background and prints the container ID. When it is not specified, the container runs in the foreground mode and you can stop it using CTRL + c. When started in the detached mode, you can reattach to the container with the docker attach command, for example, docker attach apicast.
  • -p or --publish: Publishes a container’s port to the host. The value should have the format <host port="">:<container port="">, so -p 80:8080 will bind port 8080 of the container to port 80 of the host machine. For example, the Management API uses port 8090, so you may want to publish this port by adding -p 8090:8090 to the docker run command.
  • -e or --env: Sets environment variables.
  • -v or --volume: Mounts a volume. The value is typically represented as <host path="">:<container path="">[:<options>]. <options> is an optional attribute; you can set it to :ro to specify that the volume will be read only (by default, it is mounted in read-write mode). Example: -v /host/path:/container/path:ro.

For more information on available options, see Docker run reference.

3.4. Step 3: Testing APIcast

The preceding steps ensure that your Docker-formatted container is running with your own configuration file and the Docker-formatted image from the 3scale registry. You can test calls through APIcast on port 8080 and provide the correct authentication credentials, which you can get from your 3scale account.

Test calls will not only verify that APIcast is running correctly but also that authentication and reporting is being handled successfully.

Note

Ensure that the host you use for the calls is the same as the one configured in the Public Base URL field on the Integration page.

3.5. Step 4: Troubleshooting APIcast on the Docker containerized environment

3.5.1. Cannot connect to the Docker daemon error

The docker: Cannot connect to the Docker daemon. Is the docker daemon running on this host? error message may be because the Docker service hasn’t started. You can check the status of the Docker daemon by running the sudo systemctl status docker.service command.

Ensure that you are run this command as the root user because the Docker containerized environment requires root permissions in RHEL by default. For more information, see here).

3.5.2. Basic Docker command-line interface commands

If you started the container in the detached mode (-d option) and want to check the logs for the running APIcast instance, you can use the log command: sudo docker logs <container>. Where ,<container> is the container name ("apicast" in the example above) or the container ID. You can get a list of the running containers and their IDs and names by using the sudo docker ps command.

To stop the container, run the sudo docker stop <container> command. You can also remove the container by running the sudo docker rm <container> command.

For more information on available commands, see Docker commands reference.

3.6. Step 5: Customising the Gateway

There are some customizations that cannot be managed through the admin portal and require writing custom logic to APIcast itself.

3.6.1. Custom Lua logic

The easiest way to customise APIcast logic is to rewrite the existing file with your own and attach it as a volume.

-v $(pwd)/path_to/file.lua:/opt/app-root/src/src/file.lua:ro

The -v flag attaches the local file to the stated path in the Docker-formatted container.

3.6.2. Customising the configuration files

The same steps apply to custom configuration files as the Lua scripting. If you want to add to the existing conf files rather than overwriting, ensure the name of your new file does not clash with pre-existing ones. This will automatically be included in the main nginx.conf.

To edit the config.json file, you can fetch this file from your admin portal with the following URL: https://<account>-admin.3scale.net/admin/api/nginx/spec.json and copy and paste the contents locally. You can pass this local JSON file with the following command to start APIcast:

docker run --name apicast --rm -p 8080:8080 -v $(pwd)/path_to/config.json:/opt/app/config.json:ro -e THREESCALE_CONFIG_FILE=/opt/app/config.json

You should now be able to run APIcast on the Docker containerized environment. For other deployment options, check out the related articles.

Chapter 4. Running APIcast on Red Hat OpenShift

This tutorial describes how to deploy the APIcast API Gateway on Red Hat OpenShift.

4.1. Prerequisites

To follow the tutorial steps below, you will first need to configure APIcast in your 3scale Admin Portal as per the APIcast Overview. Make sure Self-managed Gateway is selected as the deployment option in the integration settings. You should have both Staging and Production environment configured to proceed.

4.2. Step 1: Set up OpenShift

If you already have a running OpenShift cluster, you can skip this step. Otherwise, continue reading.

For production deployments you can follow the instructions for OpenShift installation. In order to get started quickly in development environments, there are a couple of ways you can install OpenShift:

In this tutorial the OpenShift cluster will be installed using:

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7
  • Docker containerized environment v1.10.3
  • OpenShift Origin command line interface (CLI) - v1.3.1

4.2.1. Install the Docker containerized environment

Docker-formatted container images provided by Red Hat are released as part of the Extras channel in RHEL. To enable additional repositories, you can use either the Subscription Manager, or yum config manager. See the RHEL product documentation for details.

For a RHEL 7 deployed on a AWS EC2 instance we’ll use the following the instructions:

  1. List all repositories:

    sudo yum repolist all

Find the *-extras repository.

  1. Enable extras repository:

    sudo yum-config-manager --enable rhui-REGION-rhel-server-extras
  2. Install Docker-formatted container images:

    sudo yum install docker docker-registry
  3. Add an insecure registry of 172.30.0.0/16 by adding or uncommenting the following line in /etc/sysconfig/docker file:

    INSECURE_REGISTRY='--insecure-registry 172.30.0.0/16'
  4. Start the Docker containerized environment:

    sudo systemctl start docker

You can verify that the Docker containerized environment is running with the command:

sudo systemctl status docker

4.2.2. Start OpenShift cluster

Download the latest stable release of the client tools (openshift-origin-client-tools-VERSION-linux-64bit.tar.gz) from OpenShift releases page, and place the Linux oc binary extracted from the archive in your PATH.

Note
  • Please be aware that the oc cluster set of commands are only available in the 1.3+ or newer releases.
  • the docker command runs as the root user, so you will need to run any oc or docker commands with root privileges.

Open a terminal with a user that has permission to run docker commands and run:

oc cluster up

At the bottom of the output you will find information about the deployed cluster:

    -- Server Information ...
      OpenShift server started.
      The server is accessible via web console at:
      https://172.30.0.112:8443

      You are logged in as:
        User:     developer
        Password: developer

      To login as administrator:
        oc login -u system:admin

Note the IP address that is assigned to your OpenShift server, we will refer to it in the tutorial as OPENSHIFT-SERVER-IP.

4.2.2.1. Setting up OpenShift cluster on a remote server

In case you are deploying the OpenShift cluster on a remote server, you will need to explicitly specify a public hostname and a routing suffix on starting the cluster, in order to be able to access the OpenShift web console remotely.

For example, if you are deploying on an AWS EC2 instance, you should specify the following options:

oc cluster up --public-hostname=ec2-54-321-67-89.compute-1.amazonaws.com --routing-suffix=54.321.67.89.xip.io

where ec2-54-321-67-89.compute-1.amazonaws.com is the Public Domain, and 54.321.67.89 is the IP of the instance. You will then be able to access the OpenShift web console at https://ec2-54-321-67-89.compute-1.amazonaws.com:8443.

4.3. Step 2: Deploy APIcast using the OpenShift template

  1. By default you are logged in as developer and can proceed to the next step.

    Otherwise login into OpenShift using the oc login command from the OpenShift Client tools you downloaded and installed in the previous step. The default login credentials are username = "developer" and password = "developer":

    oc login https://OPENSHIFT-SERVER-IP:8443

    You should see Login successful. in the output.

  2. Create your project. This example sets the display name as gateway

    oc new-project "3scalegateway" --display-name="gateway" --description="3scale gateway demo"

    The response should look like this:

    Now using project "3scalegateway" on server "https://172.30.0.112:8443".

    Ignore the suggested next steps in the text output at the command prompt and proceed to the next step below.

  3. Create a new Secret to reference your project by replacing <access_token> and <domain> with yours.

    oc create secret generic apicast-configuration-url-secret --from-literal=password=https://<access_token>@<admin_portal_domain>  --type=kubernetes.io/basic-auth

    Here <access_token> is an Access Token (not a Service Token) for the 3scale Account Management API, and <domain>-admin.3scale.net is the URL of your 3scale Admin Portal.

    The response should look like this:

    secret/apicast-configuration-url-secret
  4. Create an application for your APIcast Gateway from the template, and start the deployment:

    oc new-app -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/3scale/3scale-amp-openshift-templates/2.3.0.GA/apicast-gateway/apicast.yml

    You should see the following messages at the bottom of the output:

    --> Creating resources with label app=3scale-gateway ...
        deploymentconfig "apicast" created
        service "apicast" created
    --> Success
        Run 'oc status' to view your app.

4.4. Step 3: Create routes in OpenShift console

  1. Open the web console for your OpenShift cluster in your browser: https://OPENSHIFT-SERVER-IP:8443/console/

    Use the value specified in --public-hostname instead of OPENSHIFT-SERVER-IP if you started OpenShift cluster on a remote server.

    You should see the login screen:

    OpenShift Login Screen
    Note

    You may receive a warning about an untrusted web-site. This is expected, as we are trying to access the web console through secure protocol, without having configured a valid certificate. While you should avoid this in production environment, for this test setup you can go ahead and create an exception for this address.

  2. Log in using the developer credentials created or obtained in the Setup OpenShift section above.

    You will see a list of projects, including the "gateway" project you created from the command line above.

    Openshift Projects

    If you do not see your gateway project, you probably created it with a different user and will need to assign the policy role to to this user.

  3. Click on "gateway" and you will see the Overview tab.

    OpenShift downloaded the code for APIcast and started the deployment. You may see the message Deployment #1 running when the deployment is in progress.

    When the build completes, the UI will refresh and show two instances of APIcast ( 2 pods ) that have been started by OpenShift, as defined in the template.

    Building the Gateway

    Each APIcast instance, upon starting, downloads the required configuration from 3scale using the settings you provided on the Integration page of your 3scale Admin Portal.

    OpenShift will maintain two APIcast instances and monitor the health of both; any unhealthy APIcast instance will automatically be replaced with a new one.

  4. In order to allow your APIcast instances to receive traffic, you’ll need to create a route. Start by clicking on Create Route.

    Create Route

    Enter the same host you set in 3scale above in the section Public Base URL (without the http:// and without the port) , e.g. gateway.openshift.demo, then click the Create button.

    Configure Route

    Create a new route for every 3scale service you define. Alternatively, you could avoid having to create a new route for every 3scale service you define by deploying a wildcard router.

Chapter 5. Advanced APIcast Configuration

This section covers the advanced settings option of 3scale’s API gateway in the staging environment.

5.1. Define a secret token

For security reasons, any request from the 3scale gateway to your API backend contains a header called X-3scale-proxy-secret-token. You can set the value of this header in Authentication Settings on the Integration page.

Proxy secret token

Setting the secret token acts as a shared secret between the proxy and your API so that you can block all API requests that do not come from the gateway if you do not want them to. This adds an extra layer of security to protect your public endpoint while you are in the process of setting up your traffic management policies with the sandbox gateway.

Your API backend must have a public resolvable domain for the gateway to work, so anyone who knows your API backend can bypass the credentials checking. This should not be a problem because the API gateway in the staging environment is not meant for production use, but it is always better to have a fence available.

5.2. Credentials

The API credentials within 3scale are always user_key or app_id/app_key depending on the authentication mode that you are using (OAuth is not available for the API gateway in the staging environment). However, you might want to use different credential names in your API. In this case, you will need to set custom names for the user_key if you are using the API key mode:

Custom user_key

Or, for the app_id and app_key:

Custom app_key/app_id

For instance, you could rename app_id to key if that fits your API better. The gateway will take the name key and convert it to app_id before doing the authorization call to the 3scale backend. Note that the new credential name has to be alphanumeric.

You can decide if your API passes credentials in the query string (or body if not a GET) or in the headers.

Proxy Credentials Location
Note

APIcast normalizes header names when extracting credentials. This means they are case insensitive, and underscores and hyphens are treated equally. For example, if you set the App Key parameter as App_Key, other values such as app-key are also accepted as valid app key headers.

5.3. Error messages

Another important element for a full-fledged configuration is to define your own custom error messages.

It is important to note that the 3scale API gateway in the staging environment will do a pass of any error message generated by your API. However, since the management layer of your API is now carried out by the gateway, there are some errors that your API will never see because some requests will be terminated by the gateway.

Custom Error Messages

Following are some of the errors:

  • Authentication missing: This error is generated whenever an API request does not contain any credentials. It occurs when users do not add their credentials to an API request.
  • Authentication failed: This error is generated whenever an API request does not contain the valid credentials. It can be because the credentials are fake or because the application has been temporarily suspended.
  • No match: This error means that the request did not match any mapping rule and therefore no metric is updated. This is not necessarily an error, but it means that either the user is trying random paths or that your mapping rules do not cover legitimate cases.

5.4. Configuration History

Every time you click the Update & Test Staging Configuration button, the current configuration is saved in a JSON file. The staging gateway will pull the latest configuration with each new request. For each environment, staging or production, you can see a history of all the previous configuration files.

Note that it is not possible to automatically roll back to previous versions. Instead a history of all your configuration versions with their associated JSON files is provided. Use these files to check what configuration you had deployed at any point of time. If you want to, you can recreate any deployments manually.

5.5. Debugging

Setting up the gateway configuration is easy, but you may still encounter errors. In such cases, the gateway can return useful debug information to track the error.

To get the debuggging information from APIcast, you must add the following header to the API request: X-3scale-debug: {SERVICE_TOKEN} with the service token corresponding to the API service that you are reaching to.

When the header is found and the service token is valid, the gateway will add the following information to the response headers:

X-3scale-matched-rules: /v1/word/{word}.json, /v1
X-3scale-credentials: app_key=APP_KEY&app_id=APP_ID
X-3scale-usage: usage%5Bversion_1%5D=1&usage%5Bword%5D=1

X-3scale-matched-rules indicates which mapping rules have been matched for the request in a comma-separated list.

The header X-3scale-credentials returns the credentials that were passed to 3scale backend.

X-3scale-usage indicates the usage that was reported to 3scale backend. usage%5Bversion_1%5D=1&usage%5Bword%5D=1 is a URL-encoded usage[version_1]=1&usage[word]=1 and shows that the API request incremented the methods (metrics) version_1 and word by 1 hit each.

5.6. Path routing

APIcast handles all the API services configured on a 3scale account (or a subset of services, if the APICAST_SERVICES_LIST environment variable is configured). Normally, APIcast routes the API requests to the appropriate API service based on the hostname of the request, by matching it with the Public Base URL. The first service where the match is found is used for the authorization.

The Path routing feature allows using the same Public Base URL on multiple services and routes the requests using the path of the request. To enable the feature, set the APICAST_PATH_ROUTING environment variable to true or 1. When enabled, APIcast will map the incoming requests to the services based on both hostname and path.

This feature can be used if you want to expose multiple backend services hosted on different domains through one gateway using the same Public Base URL. To achieve this you can configure several API services for each API backend (i.e. Private Base URL) and enable the path routing feature.

For example, you have 3 services configured in the following way:

  • Service A Public Base URL: api.example.com Mapping rule: /a
  • Service B Public Base URL: api2.example.com Mapping rule: /b
  • Service C Public Base URL: api.example.com Mapping rule: /c

If path routing is disabled (APICAST_PATH_ROUTING=false), all calls to api.example.com will try to match Service A. So, the calls api.example.com/c and api.example.com/b will fail with a "No Mapping Rule matched" error.

If path routing is enabled (APICAST_PATH_ROUTING=true), the calls will be matched by both host and path. So:

  • api.example.com/a will be routed to Service A
  • api.example.com/c will be routed to Service C
  • api.example.com/b will fail with "No Mapping Rule matched" error, i.e. it will NOT match Service B, as the Public Base URL does not match.

If path routing is used, you must ensure there is no conflict between the mapping rules in different services that use the same Public Base URL, i.e. each combination of method + path pattern is only used in one service.

Chapter 6. APIcast Policies

APIcast policies are units of functionality that modify how APIcast operates. Policies can be enabled, disabled, and configured to control how they modify APIcast. Use policies to add functionality that is not available in a default APIcast deployment. You can create your own policies, or use standard policies provided by Red Hat 3scale.

Control policies for a service with a policy chain. Policy chains do the following:

  • specify what policies APIcast uses
  • provide configuration information for policies 3scale uses
  • specify the order in which 3scale loads policies
Note

Red Hat 3scale provides a method for adding custom policies, but does not support custom policies.

In order to modify APIcast behavior with custom policies, you must do the following:

  • Add custom policies to APIcast
  • Define a policy chain that configures APIcast policies
  • Add the policy chain to APIcast

6.1. APIcast Standard Policies

Red Hat 3scale provides the following standard policies:

You can enable and configure standard policies in the 3scale API Management.

6.1.1. 3scale Auth Caching policy

The 3scale Auth Caching policy caches authentication calls made to APIcast. You can select an operating mode to configure the cache operations.

3scale Auth Caching is available in the following modes:

1. Strict - Cache only authorized calls.

"Strict" mode only caches authorized calls. If a policy is running under the "strict" mode and if a call fails or is denied, the policy invalidates the cache entry. If the backend becomes unreachable, all cached calls are rejected, regardless of their cached status.

2. Resilient – Authorize according to last request when backend is down.

The "Resilient" mode caches both authorized and denied calls. If the policy is running under the "resilient" mode, failed calls do not invalidate an existing cache entry. If the backend becomes unreachable, calls hitting the cache continue to be authorized or denied based on their cached status.

3. Allow - When backend is down, allow everything unless seen before and denied.

The "Allow" mode caches both authorized and denied calls. If the policy is running under the "allow" mode, cached calls continue to be denied or allowed based on the cached status. However, any new calls are cached as authorized.

Important

Operating in the "allow" mode has security implications. Consider these implications and exercise caution when using the "allow" mode.

4. None - Disable caching.

The "None" mode disables caching. This mode is useful if you want the policy to remain active, but do not want to use caching.

Configuration properties

propertydescriptionvaluesrequired?

caching_type

The caching_type property allows you to define which mode the cache will operate in.

data type: enumerated string [resilient, strict, allow, none]

yes

Policy object example

{
  "name": "caching",
  "version": "builtin",
  "configuration": {
    "caching_type": "allow"
  }
}

For information on how to configure policies, see the Creating a policy chain section of the documentation.

6.1.2. 3scale Batcher Policy

The 3scale Batcher policy provides an alternative to the standard APIcast authorization mechanism, in which one call to the 3scale backend (Service Management API) is made for each API request APIcast receives.

The 3scale Batcher policy reduces latency and increases throughput by significantly reducing the number of requests to the 3scale backend. In order to achieve this, this policy caches authorization statuses and batches usage reports.

When the 3scale Batcher policy is enabled, APIcast uses the following authorization flow:

  1. On each request, the policy checks whether the credentials are cached:

    • If the credentials are cached, the policy uses the cached authorization status instead of calling the 3scale backend.
    • If the credentials are not cached, the policy calls the backend and caches the authorization status with a configurable Time to Live (TTL).
  2. Instead of reporting the usage corresponding to the request to the 3scale backend immediately, the policy accumulates their usage counters to report them to the backend in batches. A separate thread reports the accumulated usage counters to the 3scale backend in a single call, with a configurable frequency.

The 3scale Batcher policy improves the throughput, but with reduced accuracy. The usage limits and the current utilization are stored in 3scale, and APIcast can only get the correct authorization status when making calls to the 3scale backend. When the 3scale Batcher policy is enabled, there is a period of time APIcast is not sending calls to 3scale. During this window, applications making calls might go over the defined limits.

Use this policy for high-load APIs if the throughput is more important than the accuracy of the rate limiting. The 3scale Batcher policy gives better results in terms of accuracy when the reporting frequency and authorization TTL are much less than the rate limiting period. For example, if the limits are per day and the reporting frequency and authorization TTL are configured to be several minutes.

The 3scale Batcher policy supports the following configuration settings:

  • auths_ttl: Sets the TTL in seconds when the authorization cache expires.

    When the authorization for the current call is cached, APIcast uses the cached value. After the time set in the auths_ttl parameter, APIcast removes the cache and calls the 3scale backend to retrieve the authorization status.

  • batch_report_seconds: Sets the frequency of batch reports APIcast sends to the 3scale backend. The default value is 10 seconds.
Important

To use this policy, enable both the 3scale APIcast and 3scale Batcher policy in the policy chain.

6.1.3. Anonymous Access Policy

The Anonymous access policy exposes a service without authentication. It can be useful, for example, for legacy applications that cannot be adapted to send the authentication parameters. The Anonymous policy only supports services with API Key and App Id / App Key authentication options. When the policy is enabled for API requests that do not have any credentials provided, APIcast will authorize the calls using the default credentials configured in the policy. For the API calls to be authorized, the application with the configured credentials must exist and be active.

Using the Application Plans, you can configure the rate limits on the application used for the default credentials.

Following are the required configuration properties for the policy:

  • auth_type: You can select from the following options and the property must correspond to the authentication option configured for the API:

    • app_id_and_app_key: For App ID / App Key authentication option.
    • user_key: For API key authentication option.
  • app_id (only for app_id_and_app_key auth type): The App Id of the application that will be used for authorization if no credentials are provided with the API call.
  • app_key (only for app_id_and_app_key auth type): The App Key of the application that will be used for authorization if no credentials are provided with the API call.
  • user_key (only for the user_key auth_type): The API Key of the application that will be used for authorization if no credentials are provided with the API call.

Figure 6.1. Anonymous Access Policy

Anonymous Access Policy

6.1.4. APIcast CORS Request Handling Policy

The Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) request handling policy allows you to control CORS behavior by allowing you to specify:

  • Allowed headers
  • Allowed methods
  • Allow credentials
  • Allowed origin headers

The CORS request handling policy will block all unspecified CORS requests.

Configuration properties

propertydescriptionvaluesrequired?

allow_headers

The allow_headers property is an array in which you can specify which CORS headers APIcast will allow.

data type: array of strings, must be a CORS header

no

allow_methods

The allow_methods property is an array in which you can specify which CORS methods APIcast will allow.

data type: array of enumerated strings [GET, HEAD, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH, OPTIONS, TRACE, CONNECT]

no

allow_origin

The allow_origin property allows you to specify an origin domain APIcast will allow

data type: string

no

allow_credentials

The allow_credentials property allows you to specify whether APIcast will allow a CORS request with credentials

data type: boolean

no

Policy object example

{
  "name": "cors",
  "version": "builtin",
  "configuration": {
    "allow_headers": [
      "App-Id", "App-Key",
      "Content-Type", "Accept"
    ],
    "allow_credentials": true,
    "allow_methods": [
      "GET", "POST"
    ],
    "allow_origin": "https://example.com"
  }
}

For information on how to configure policies, refer to the Creating a policy chain section of the documentation.

6.1.5. Echo Policy

The echo policy prints an incoming request back to the client, along with an optional HTTP status code.

Configuration properties

propertydescriptionvaluesrequired?

status

The HTTP status code the echo policy will return to the client

data type: integer

no

exit

Specifies which exit mode the echo policy will use. The request exit mode stops the incoming request from being processed. The set exit mode skips the rewrite phase.

data type: enumerated string [request, set]

yes

Policy object example

{
  "name": "echo",
  "version": "builtin",
  "configuration": {
    "status": 404,
    "exit": "request"
  }
}

For information on how to configure policies, refer to the Creating a policy chain section of the documentation.

6.1.6. Edge Limiting Policy

The Edge Limiting policy aims to provide flexible rate limiting for the traffic sent to the backend API and can be used with the default 3scale authorization. Some examples of the use cases supported by the policy include:

  • End-user rate limiting: Rate limit by the value of the "sub" (subject) claim of a JWT token passed in the Authorization header of the request (configured as {{ jwt.sub }}).
  • Requests Per Second (RPS) rate limiting.
  • Global rate limits per service: Apply limits per service rather than per application.
  • Concurrent connection limit: Set the number of concurrent connections allowed.

6.1.6.1. Types of limits

The policy supports the following types of limits that are provided by the lua-resty-limit-traffic library:

  • leaky_bucket_limiters: Based on the "leaky_bucket" algorithm that is based on the average number of requests plus a maximum burst size.
  • fixed_window_limiters: Based on a fixed window of time (last X seconds).
  • connection_limiters: Based on the concurrent number of connections.

You can scope any limit by service or globally.

6.1.6.2. Limit definition

The limits have a key that encodes the entities that are used to define the limit (an IP, a service, an endpoint, an ID, the value for a specific header, etc.). The Key is specified in the key parameter of the limiter.

key is an object that is defined by the following properties:

  • name: It is the name of the key. It must be unique in the scope.
  • scope: It defines the scope of the key. The supported scopes are:

    • Per service scope that affects one service (service).
    • Global scope that affects all the services (global).
  • name_type: It defines how the "name" value will be evaluated:

    • As plain text (plain)
    • As Liquid (liquid)

Each limit also has some parameters that vary depending on their types:

  • leaky_bucket_limiters: rate, burst.

    • rate: It defines how many requests can be made per second without a delay.
    • burst: It defines the amount of requests per second that can exceed the allowed rate. An artificial delay is introduced for requests above the allowed rate (specified by rate). After exceeding the rate by more requests per second than defined in burst, the requests get rejected.
  • fixed_window_limiters: count, window. count defines how many requests can be made per number of seconds defined in window.
  • connection_limiters: conn, burst, delay.

    • conn: Defines the maximum number of the concurrent connections allowed. It allows exceeding that number by burst connections per second.
    • delay: It is the number of seconds to delay the connections that exceed the limit.

Examples

  1. Allow 10 requests per minute to service_A:

    {
      "key": { "name": "service_A" },
      "count": 10,
      "window": 60
    }
  2. Allow 100 connections with bursts of 10 with a delay of 1s:

    {
      "key": { "name": "service_A" },
      "conn": 100,
      "burst": 10,
      "delay": 1
    }

You can define several limits for each service. In case multiple limits are defined, the request can be rejected or delayed if at least one limit is reached.

6.1.6.3. Liquid templating

The Edge Limiting policy allows specifying the limits for the dynamic keys by supporting Liquid variables in the keys. For this, the name_type parameter of the key must be set to "liquid" and the name parameter can then use Liquid variables. Example: {{ remote_addr }} for the client IP address or {{ jwt.sub }} for the "sub" claim of the JWT token.

Example:

{
  "key": { "name": "{{ jwt.sub }}", "name_type": "liquid" },
  "count": 10,
  "window": 60
}

For more information about Liquid support, see Section 6.7, “Using variables and filters in policies”.

6.1.6.4. Applying conditions

Each limiter can have an optional condition that defines when the limiter must be applied. The condition is specified in the condition property of the limiter.

condition is defined by the following properties:

  • combine_op. It is the boolean operator applied to the list of operations. The following two values are supported: or and and.
  • operations. It is a list of conditions that need to be evaluated. Each operation is represented by an object with the following properties:

    • left: The left part of the operation.
    • left_type: How the left property is evaluated (plain or liquid).
    • right: The right part of the operation.
    • right_type: How the right property is evaluated (plain or liquid).
    • op: Operator applied between the left and the right parts. The following two values are supported: == (equals) and != (not equals).

Example:

"condition": {
  "combine_op": "and",
  "operations": [
    {
      "op": "==",
      "right": "GET",
      "left_type": "liquid",
      "left": "{{ http_method }}",
      "right_type": "plain"
    }
  ]
}

6.1.6.5. Configuring the store

By default, Edge Limiting policy uses OpenResty shared dictionary for the rate limiting counters. However, an external Redis server can be used instead of the shared dictionary. This can be useful when multiple APIcast instances are used. Redis server can be configured using the redis_url parameter.

6.1.6.6. Error handling

The limiters support the following parameters to configure how the errors are handled:

  • limits_exceeded_error allows to configure the error status code and message that will be returned to the client when the configured limits are exceeded. The following parameters should be configured:

    • status_code: The status code of the request when the limits are exceeded. Default: 429.
    • error_handling: How to handle the error.

      • exit: "Respond with an error".
      • log: "Let the request go through and only output logs"
  • configuration_error allows to configure the error status code and message that will be returned to the client in case of incorrect configuration. The following parameters should be configured:

    • status_code : The status code when there is a configuration issue. Default: 500.
    • error_handling: How to handle the error.

      • exit: "Respond with an error".
      • log: "Let the request go through and only output logs".

6.1.7. Header Modification Policy

The Header modification policy allows you to modify the existing headers or define additional headers to add to or remove from an incoming request or response. You can modify both response and request headers.

The Header modification policy supports the following configuration parameters:

  • request: List of operations to apply to the request headers
  • response: List of operations to apply to the response headers

Each operation consists of the following parameters:

  • op: Specifies the operation to be applied. The add operation adds a value to an existing header. The set operation creates a header and value, and will overwrite an existing header’s value if one already exists. The push operation creates a header and value, but will not overwrite an existing header’s value if one already exists. Instead, push will add the value to the existing header.
  • header: Specifies the header to be created or modified and can be any string that can be used as a header name (e.g. Custom-Header).
  • value_type: Defines how the header value will be evaluated and can either be plain for plain text or liquid for evaluation as a Liquid template. For more information, see Section 6.7, “Using variables and filters in policies”.
  • value: Specifies the value that will be used for the header. For value type "liquid" the value should be in the format {{ variable_from_context }}

Policy object example

{
  "name": "headers",
  "version": "builtin",
  "configuration": {
    "response": [
      {
        "op": "add",
        "header": "Custom-Header",
        "value_type": "plain",
        "value": "any-value"
      }
    ],
    "request": [
      {
        "op": "set",
        "header": "Authorization",
        "value_type": "plain",
        "value": "Basic dXNlcm5hbWU6cGFzc3dvcmQ="
      },
      {
        "op": "set",
        "header": "Service-ID",
        "value_type": "liquid",
        "value": "{{service.id}}"
      }
    ]
  }
}

For information on how to configure policies, see the Creating a policy chain section of the documentation.

6.1.8. Liquid Context Debug Policy

Note

The Liquid Context Debug policy is meant only for debugging purposes in the development environment and not in production.

This policy responds to the API request with a JSON, containing the objects and values that are available in the context and can be used for evaluating Liquid templates. When combined with the 3scale APIcast or Upstream policy, Liquid Context Debug must be placed before them in the policy chain in order to work correctly. To avoid circular references, the policy only includes duplicated objects once and replaces them with a stub value.

An example of the value returned by APIcast when the policy is enabled:

{
  "jwt": {
    "azp": "972f7b4f",
    "iat": 1537538097,
    ...
    "exp": 1537574096,
    "typ": "Bearer"
  },
  "credentials": {
    "app_id": "972f7b4f"
  },
  "usage": {
    "deltas": {
      "hits": 1
    },
    "metrics": [
      "hits"
    ]
  },
  "service": {
    "id": "2",
    ...
  }
  ...
}

6.1.9. Logging Policy

The logging policy allows enabling or disabling APIcast (NGINX) access logs for each API service individually. By default, this policy is not enabled in policy chains.

This policy only supports the enable_access_logs configuration parameter. To disable access logging for a service, enable the policy, unselect the enable_access_logs parameter and click the Submit button. To enable the access logs, select the enable_access_logs parameter or disable the Logging policy.

Logging Policy Configuration

You can combine the Logging policy with the global setting for the location of access logs. Set the APICAST_ACCESS_LOG_FILE environment variable to configure the location of APIcast access logs. By default, this variable is set to /dev/stdout, which is the standard output device. For further details about global APIcast parameters, see Chapter 7, APIcast Environment Variables.

6.1.10. OAuth 2.0 Token Introspection Policy

The OAuth 2.0 Token Introspection policy allows validating the JSON Web Token (JWT) token used for services with the OpenID Connect authentication option using the Token Introspection Endpoint of the token issuer (Red Hat Single Sign-On).

APIcast supports the following authentication types in the auth_type field to determine the Token Introspection Endpoint and the credentials APIcast uses when calling this endpoint:

use_3scale_oidc_issuer_endpoint

With this setting, APIcast uses the client credentials (Client ID and Client Secret) and the Token Introspection Endpoint from the OpenID Connect Issuer setting configured on the Service Integration page.

APIcast discovers the Token Introspection endpoint from the token_introspection_endpoint field the .well-known/openid-configuration endpoint of the OpenID Connect issuer returns.

Example 6.1. Authentication type set to use_3scale_oidc_issuer_endpoint

The following is a configuration example if the authentication type is set to use_3scale_oidc_issuer_endpoint:

"policy_chain": [
…​
  {
    "name": "apicast.policy.token_introspection",
    "configuration": {
      "auth_type": "use_3scale_oidc_issuer_endpoint"
    }
  }
…​
],
client_id+client_secret

This option enables you to specify a different Token Introspection Endpoint, as well as the Client ID and Client Secret APIcast uses to request token information.

When using this option, set the following configuration parameters:

  • client_id: Sets the Client ID for the Token Introspection Endpoint.
  • client_secret: Sets the Client Secret for the Token Introspection Endpoint.
  • introspection_url: Sets the Introspection Endpoint URL.

    Example 6.2. Authentication type set to client_id+client_secret

    The following is a configuration example if the authentication type is set to client_id+client_secret:

    "policy_chain": [
    …​
      {
        "name": "apicast.policy.token_introspection",
        "configuration": {
          "auth_type": "client_id+client_secret",
          "client_id": "myclient",
          "client_secret": "mysecret",
          "introspection_url": "http://red_hat_single_sign-on/token/introspection"
        }
      }
    …​
    ],

Regardless of the setting in the auth_type field, APIcast uses Basic Authentication to authorize the Token Introspection call (Authorization: Basic <token> header, where <token> is Base64-encoded <client_id>:<client_secret> setting).

OAuth 2.0 Token Introspection Configuration

The response of the Token Introspection Endpoint contains the active attribute. APIcast checks the value of this attribute. Depending on the value of the attribute, APIcast authorizes or rejects the call:

  • true: The call is authorized
  • false: The call is rejected with the Authentication Failed error

The policy allows enabling caching of the tokens to avoid calling the Token Introspection Endpoint on every call for the same JWT token. To enable token caching for the Token Introspection Policy, set the max_cached_tokens field to a value from 0, which disables the feature, and 10000. Additionally, you can set a Time to Live (TTL) value from 1 to 3600 seconds for tokens in the max_ttl_tokens field.

6.1.11. Referrer Policy

The 3scale Referrer policy enables the Referrer Filtering feature. When the policy is enabled in the service policy chain, APIcast sends the value of the Referer policy of the upcoming request to the Service Management API (AuthRep call) in the referrer parameter. For more information on how Referrer Filtering works, see the Referrer Filtering section in Authentication Patterns.

6.1.12. RH-SSO/Keycloak Role Check Policy

This policy adds role check when used with the OpenID Connect authentication option. This policy verifies realm roles and client roles in the access token issued by Red Hat Single Sign-On. The realm roles are specified when you want to add role check to every client’s resources or 3Scale.

Following are the two types of role checks that the type property specifies in the policy configuration:

  • whitelist (default): When whitelist is used, APIcast will check if the specified scopes are present in the JWT token and will reject the call if the JWT doesn’t have the scopes.
  • blacklist: When blacklist is used, APIcast will reject the calls if the JWT token contains the blacklisted scopes.

It is not possible to configure both checks – blacklist and whitelist in the same policy, but you can add more than one instances of the RH-SSO/Keycloak role check policy to the APIcast policy chain.

You can configure a list of scopes via the scopes property of the policy configuration.

Each scope object has the following properties:

  • resource: Resource (endpoint) controlled by the role. This is the same format as Mapping Rules. The pattern matches from the beginning of the string and to make an exact match you must append $ at the end.
  • resource_type: This defines how the resource value is evaluated.

    • As plain text (plain): Evaluates the resource value as plain text. Example: /api/v1/products$.
    • As Liquid text (liquid): Allows using Liquid in the resource value. Example: /resource_{{ jwt.aud }} manages access to the resource including the Client ID (contained in the JWT aud claim).
  • realm_roles: Use it to check the realm role (see the Realm Roles in Red Hat Single Sign-On documentation).

    The realm roles are present in the JWT issued by Red Hat Single Sign-On.

      "realm_access": {
        "roles": [
          "<realm_role_A>", "<realm_role_B>"
        ]
      }

    The real roles must be specified in the policy.

    "realm_roles": [
      { "name": "<realm_role_A>" }, { "name": "<realm_role_B>" }
    ]

    Following are the available properties of each object in the realm_roles array:

  • name: Specifies the name of the role.
  • name_type: Defines how the name must be evaluated; it can be plain or liquid (works the same way as for the resource_type).
  • client_roles: Use client_roles to check for the particular access roles in the client namespace (see the Client Roles in Red Hat Single Sign-On documentation).

    The client roles are present in the JWT under the resource_access claim.

      "resource_access": {
        "<client_A>": {
          "roles": [
            "<client_role_A>", "<client_role_B>"
          ]
        },
        "<client_B>": {
          "roles": [
            "<client_role_A>", "<client_role_B>"
          ]
        }
      }

    Specify the client roles in the policy.

    "client_roles": [
      { "name": "<client_role_A>", "client": "<client_A>" },
      { "name": "<client_role_B>", "client": "<client_A>" },
      { "name": "<client_role_A>", "client": "<client_B>" },
      { "name": "<client_role_B>", "client": "<client_B>" }
    ]

    Following are the available properties of each object in the client_roles array:

  • name: Specifies the name of the role.
  • name_type: Defines how the name value must be evaluated; it can be plain or liquid (works the same way as for the resource_type).
  • client: Specifies the client of the role. When it is not defined, this policy uses the aud claim as the client.
  • client_type: Defines how the client value must be evaluated; it can be plain or liquid (works the same way as for the resource_type).

6.1.13. Prometheus Metrics

Prometheus is a stand-alone, open source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit.

Important

For this release of Red Hat 3scale, Prometheus installation and configuration are not supported. Optionally, you can use the community version of Prometheus to visualize metrics and alerts for APIcast-managed API services.

Prometheus metrics availability

APIcast integration with Prometheus is available for the following deployment options:

  • Self-managed APIcast (both with hosted or on-premises API manager)
  • Built-in APIcast on-premise
Note

APIcast integration with Prometheus is not available in hosted API manager and hosted APIcast.

Prometheus metrics list

The following metrics are always available:

MetricDescriptionTypeLabels

nginx_http_connections

Number of HTTP connections

gauge

state(accepted,active,handled,reading,total,waiting,writing)

nginx_error_log

APIcast errors

counter

level(debug,info,notice,warn,error,crit,alert,emerg)

openresty_shdict_capacity

Capacity of the dictionaries shared between workers

gauge

dict(one for every dictionary)

openresty_shdict_free_space

Free space of the dictionaries shared between workers

gauge

dict(one for every dictionary)

nginx_metric_errors_total

Number of errors of the Lua library that manages the metrics

counter

-

backend_response

Response status codes from 3scale’s backend

counter

status(2xx,4xx,5xx)

Metrics with no value

If a metric has no value, the metric is hidden. For example, if nginx_error_log has no errors to report, the nginx_error_log metric is not displayed. It will only be visible once it has a value.

6.1.14. SOAP Policy

The SOAP policy matches SOAP action URIs provided in the SOAPAction or Content-Type header of an HTTP request with mapping rules specified in the policy.

Configuration properties

propertydescriptionvaluesrequired?

pattern

The pattern property allows you to specify a string that APIcast will seek matches for in the SOAPAction URI.

data type: string

yes

metric_system_name

The metric_system_name property allows you to specify the 3scale backend metric with which your matched pattern will register a hit.

data type: string, must be a valid metric

yes

Policy object example

{
  "name": "soap",
  "version": "builtin",
  "configuration": {
    "mapping_rules": [
      {
        "pattern": "http://example.com/soap#request",
        "metric_system_name": "soap",
        "delta": 1
      }
    ]
  }
}

For information on how to configure policies, refer to the Creating a policy chain section of the documentation.

6.1.15. Upstream Policy

The Upstream policy allows you to parse the Host request header using regular expressions and replace the upstream URL defined in the Private Base URL with a different URL.

For Example:

A policy with a regex /foo, and URL field newexample.com would replace the URL https://www.example.com/foo/123/ with newexample.com

Policy chain reference:

propertydescriptionvaluesrequired?

regex

The regex property allows you to specify the regular expression that the Upstream policy will use when searching for a match with the request path.

data type: string, Must be a valid regular expression syntax

yes

url

Using the url property, you can specify the replacement URL in the event of a match. Note that the upstream policy does not check whether or not this URL is valid.

data type: string, ensure this is a valid URL

yes

Policy object example

{
  "name": "upstream",
  "version": "builtin",
  "configuration": {
    "rules": [
      {
        "regex": "^/v1/.*",
        "url": "https://api-v1.example.com",

      }
    ]
  }
}

For information on how to configure policies, refer to the Creating a policy chain section of the documentation.

6.1.16. URL Rewriting Policy

The URL rewriting policy allows you to modify the path of a request and the query string.

When combined with the 3scale APIcast policy, if the URL rewriting policy is placed before the 3scale APIcast policy in the policy chain, the APIcast mapping rules will apply to the modified path. If the URL rewriting policy is placed after APIcast in the policy chain, then the mapping rules will apply to the original path.

The policy supports the following two sets of operations:

  • commands: List of commands to be applied to rewrite the path of the request.
  • query_args_commands: List of commands to be applied to rewrite the query string of the request.

6.1.16.1. Commands for rewriting the path

Following are the configuration parameters that each command in the commands list consists of:

  • op: Operation to be applied. The options available are: sub and gsub. The sub operation replaces only the first occurrence of a match with your specified regular expression. The gsub operation replaces all occurrences of a match with your specified regular expression. See the documentation for the sub and gsub operations.
  • regex: Perl-compatible regular expression to be matched.
  • replace: Replacement string that is used in the event of a match.
  • options (optional): Options that define how the regex matching is performed. For information on available options, see the ngx.re.match section of the OpenResty Lua module project documentation.
  • break (optional): When set to true (checkbox enabled), if the command rewrote the URL, it will be the last one applied (all posterior commands in the list will be discarded).

6.1.16.2. Commands for rewriting the query string

Following are configuration parameters that each command in the query_args_commands list consists of:

  • op: Operation to be applied to the query arguments. The following options are available:

    • add: Add a value to an existing argument.
    • set: Create the arg when not set and replace its value when set.
    • push: Create the arg when not set and add the value when set.
    • delete: Delete an arg.
  • arg: The query argument name that the operation is applied on.
  • value: Specifies the value that is used for the query argument. For value type "liquid" the value should be in the format {{ variable_from_context }}. For the delete operation the value is not taken into account.
  • value_type (optional): Defines how the query argument value is evaluated and can either be plain for plain text or liquid for evaluation as a Liquid template. For more information, see Section 6.7, “Using variables and filters in policies”. If not specified, the type "plain" is used by default.

Example

The URL Rewriting policy is configured as follows:

{
  "name": "url_rewriting",
  "version": "builtin",
  "configuration": {
    "query_args_commands": [
      {
        "op": "add",
        "arg": "addarg",
        "value_type": "plain",
        "value": "addvalue"
      },
      {
        "op": "delete",
        "arg": "user_key",
        "value_type": "plain",
        "value": "any"
      },
      {
        "op": "push",
        "arg": "pusharg",
        "value_type": "plain",
        "value": "pushvalue"
      },
      {
        "op": "set",
        "arg": "setarg",
        "value_type": "plain",
        "value": "setvalue"
      }
    ],
    "commands": [
      {
        "op": "sub",
        "regex": "^/api/v\\d+/",
        "replace": "/internal/",
        "options": "i"
      }
    ]
  }

The original request URI that is sent to the APIcast:

https://api.example.com/api/v1/products/123/details?user_key=abc123secret&pusharg=first&setarg=original

The URI that APIcast sends to the API backend after applying the URL rewriting:

https://api-backend.example.com/internal/products/123/details?pusharg=first&pusharg=pushvalue&setarg=setvalue

The following transformations are applied:

  1. The substring /api/v1/ matches the only path rewriting command and it is replaced by /internal/.
  2. user_key query argument is deleted.
  3. The value pushvalue is added as an additional value to the pusharg query argument.
  4. The value original of the query argument setarg is replaced with the configured value setvalue.
  5. The command add was not applied because the query argument addarg is not present in the original URL.

For information on how to configure policies, see the Creating a policy chain section of the documentation.

6.1.17. URL Rewriting with Captures Policy

The URL Rewriting with Captures policy is an alternative to the Section 6.1.16, “URL Rewriting Policy” policy and allows rewriting the URL of the API request before passing it to the API backend.

The URL Rewriting with Captures policy captures arguments in the URL and uses their values in the rewritten URL.

The policy supports the transformations configuration parameter. It is a list of objects that describe which transformations are applied to the request URL. Each tranformation object consist of two properties:

  • match_rule: This rule is matched to the incoming request URL. It can contain named arguments in the {nameOfArgument} format; these arguments can be used in the rewritten URL. The URL is compared to match_rule as a regular expression. The value that matches named arguments must contain only the following characters (in PCRE regex notation): [\w-.~%!$&'()*,;=@:]. Other regex tokens can be used in the match_rule expression, such as ^ for the beginning of the string and $ for the end of the string.
  • template: The template for the URL that the original URL is rewritten with; it can use named arguments from the match_rule.

The query parameters of the original URL are merged with the query parameters specified in the template.

Example

The URL Rewriting with Captures is configured as follows:

{
  "name": "rewrite_url_captures",
  "version": "builtin",
  "configuration": {
    "transformations": [
      {
        "match_rule": "/api/v1/products/{productId}/details",
        "template": "/internal/products/details?id={productId}&extraparam=anyvalue"
      }
    ]
  }
}

The original request URI that is sent to the APIcast:

https://api.example.com/api/v1/products/123/details?user_key=abc123secret

The URI that APIcast sends to the API backend after applying the URL rewriting:

https://api-backend.example.com/internal/products/details?user_key=abc123secret&extraparam=anyvalue&id=123

6.2. Enabling a standard Policy

Perform the following procedure to enable policies in the admin portal UI:

  1. Log in to your AMP
  2. Navigate to the API page and select the desired API
navigate to APIcast integrations page
  1. From the Integration page, select edit APIcast configuration
navigate to APIcast configuration page
  1. Under the POLICIES section, click add policy
policyChainOverview
  1. Select the policy you want to add and fill out the required fields
  2. Click the Update and test in Staging Environment button to save the policy chain

6.3. Creating custom APIcast policies

You can create custom APIcast policies entirely or modify the standard policies.

In order to create custom policies, you must understand the following:

  • Policies are written in Lua.
  • Policies must adhere to and be placed in the proper file directory.
  • Policy behavior is affected by how they are placed in a policy chain.
  • The interface to add custom policies is fully supported, but not the custom policies themselves.

6.4. Adding custom policies to APIcast

If you have created custom policies, you must add them to APIcast. How you do this depends on where APIcast is deployed.

You can add custom policies to the following APIcast self-managed deployments:

  • APIcast built-in gateways as part of a 3scale on-premises deployment on OpenShift
  • APIcast on OpenShift and the Docker containerized environment

You cannot add custom policies to APIcast hosted.

Warning

Never make policy changes directly onto a production gateway. Always test your changes.

6.4.1. Adding custom policies to APIcast built-in

To add custom APIcast policies to an On-Premises deployment, you must build an OpenShift image containing your custom policies and add it to your deployment. Red Hat 3scale provides a sample repository you can use as a framework to create and add custom policies to an on-premises deployment.

This sample repository contains the correct directory structure for a custom policy, as well as a template which creates an image stream and BuildConfigs for building a new APIcast OpenShift image containing any custom policies you create.

Warning

When you build apicast-custom-policies, the build process "pushes" a new image to the amp-apicast:latest tag. When there is an image change on this image stream tag (:latest), both the apicast-staging and the apicast-production tags, by default, are configured to automatically start new deployment. To avoid any disruptions to your production service (or staging, if you prefer) it is recommended to disable automatic deployment ("Automatically start a new deployment when the image changes" checkbox), or configure a different image stream tag for production (e.g. amp-apicast:production).

Follow these steps to add a custom policy to an on-premises deployment:

  1. Fork the https://github.com/3scale/apicast-example-policy [public repository with the policy example] or create a private repository with its content. You need to have the code of your custom policy available in a Git repository for OpenShift to build the image. Note that in order to use a private Git repository, you must set up the secrets in OpenShift.
  2. Clone the repository locally, add the implementation for your policy, and push the changes to your Git repository.
  3. Update the openshift.yml template. Specifically, change the following parameters:

    1. spec.source.git.uri: https://github.com/3scale/apicast-example-policy.git in the policy BuildConfig – change it to your Git repository location.
    2. spec.source.images[0].paths.sourcePath: /opt/app-root/policies/example in the custom policies BuildConfig - change example to the name of the custom policy that you have added under the policies directory in the repository.
    3. Optionally, update the OpenShift object names and image tags. However, you must ensure that the changes are coherent (example: apicast-example-policy BuildConfig builds and pushes the apicast-policy:example image that is then used as a source by the apicast-custom-policies BuildConfig. So, the tag should be the same).
  4. Create the OpenShift objects by running the command:

    oc new-app -f openshift.yml --param AMP_RELEASE=2.3.0
  5. In case the builds do not start automatically, run the following two commands. In case you changed it, replace apicast-example-policy with your own BuildConfig name (e.g. apicast-<name>-policy). Wait for the first command to complete before you execute the second one.

    oc start-build apicast-example-policy
    oc start-build apicast-custom-policies

If the build-in APIcast images have a trigger on them tracking the changes in the amp-apicast:latest image stream, the new deployment for APIcast will start. After apicast-staging has restarted, go to the Integration page on the admin portal, and click the Add Policy button to see your custom policy listed. After selecting and configuring it, click Update & test in Staging Environment to make your custom policy work in the staging APIcast.

6.4.2. Adding custom policies to APIcast on another OpenShift Container Platform

You can add custom policies to APIcast on OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) by fetching APIcast images containing your custom policies from the the Integrated OpenShift Container Registry.

Add custom policies to APIcast on another OpenShift Container Platform

  1. Add policies to APIcast built-in
  2. If you are not deploying your APIcast gateway on your primary OpenShift cluster, establish access to the internal registry on your primary OpenShift cluster.
  3. Download the 3scale 2.3 APIcast OpenShift template.
  4. To modify the template, replace the default image directory with the full image name in your internal registry.

    image: <registry>/<project>/amp-apicast:latest
  5. Deploy APIcast using the OpenShift template, specifying your customized image:

    oc new-app -f customizedApicast.yml

6.5. Creating a policy chain in the AMP

Create a policy chain in the AMP as part of your APIcast gateway configuration. Follow these steps to modify the policy chain in the UI:

  1. Log in to your AMP
  2. Navigate to the API page and select the desired API

    navigate to APIcast integrations page
  3. From the Integration page, select edit APIcast configuration

    navigate to APIcast configuration page
  4. Under the POLICIES section, use the arrow icons to reorder policies in the policy chain. Always place the APIcast policy last in the policy chain.

    policyChainOverview
  5. Click the Update and test in Staging Environment button to save the policy chain

6.6. Creating a policy chain JSON configuration file

If you are using a native deployment of APIcast, you can create a JSON configuration file to control your policy chain outside of the AMP.

A JSON configuration file policy chain contains a JSON array composed of the following information:

  • the services object with an id value that specifies which service the policy chain applies to by number
  • the proxy object, which contains the policy_chain and subsequent objects
  • the policy_chain object, which contains the values that define the policy chain
  • individual policy objects which specify both name and configuration data necessary to identify the policy and configure policy behavior

The following is an example policy chain for a custom policy sample_policy_1 and the API introspection standard policy token_introspection:

{
  "services":[
    {
      "id":1,
      "proxy":{
        "policy_chain":[
          {
            "name":"sample_policy_1", "version": "1.0",
            "configuration":{
              "sample_config_param_1":["value_1"],
              "sample_config_param_2":["value_2"]
            }
          },
          {
            "name": "token_introspection", "version": "builtin",
            "configuration": {
              introspection_url:["https://tokenauthorityexample.com"],
              client_id:["exampleName"],
              client_secret:["secretexamplekey123"]
          },
          {
             "name": "apicast", "version": "builtin",
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

All policy chains must include the built-in policy apicast. Where you place APIcast in the policy chain will affect policy behavior.

6.7. Using variables and filters in policies

Some Section 6.1, “APIcast Standard Policies” support Liquid templating that allows using not only plain string values, but also variables that are present in the context of the request.

To use a context variable, wrap its name in {{ and }}, example: {{ uri }}. If the variable is an object, you can also access its attributes, for example: {{ somevar.attr }}.

Following are the standard variables that are available in all the policies:

  • uri: The path of the request without query parameters (the value of the embedded NGINX variable $uri).
  • host: The host of the request (the value of the embedded NGINX variable $host).
  • remote_addr: The IP address of the client (the value of the embedded NGINX variable $remote_addr).
  • headers: The object containing the request headers. Use {{headers['Some-Header']}} to get a specific header value.
  • http_method: The request method: GET, POST, etc.

The variables are available in the context of the request. Policies can add extra variables to the context. These variables can be used by the same or other policies in the policy chain, provided that the phase where they are used is executed after the phase where the variable was added. It can also be the same phase if the variable is used in the policy that appears after the policy in which the variable was added.

Following are some examples of variables that the standard 3scale APIcast policy adds to the context:

  • jwt: A parsed JSON payload of the JWT token (for OpenID Connect authentication).
  • credentials: An object that holds the application credentials. Example: "app_id": "972f7b4f", "user_key": "13b668c4d1e10eaebaa5144b4749713f".
  • service: An object that holds the configuration for the service that the current request is handled by. Example: the service ID would be available as {{ service.id }}.

For a full list of objects and values available in the context, see the Section 6.1.8, “Liquid Context Debug Policy”).

The variables are used with the help of Liquid templates. Example: {{ remote_addr }}, {{ headers['Some-Header'] }}, {{ jwt.aud }}. The policies that support variables for the values have a special parameter, usually with the _type suffix (example: value_type, name_type, etc.) that accepts two values: "plain" for plain text and "liquid" for liquid template.

APIcast also supports Liquid filters that can be applied to the variables' values. The filters apply NGINX functions to the value of the Liquid variable.

The filters are placed within the variable output tag {{ }}, following the name of the variable or the literal value by a pipe character | and the name of the filter. Examples: {{ 'username:password' | encode_base64 }}, {{ uri | escape_uri }}.

Some filters do not require parameters, so you can use an empty string instead of the variable. Example: {{ '' | utctime }} will return the current time in UTC time zone.

Filters can be chained as follows: {{ variable | function1 | function2 }}. Example: {{ '' | utctime | escape_uri }}.

Following is the list of the available functions:

Chapter 7. APIcast Environment Variables

APIcast environment variables allow you to modify behavior for APIcast. The following values are supported environment variables:

Note
  • Unsupported or deprecated environment variables are not listed
  • Some environment variable functionality may have moved to APIcast policies

APICAST_BACKEND_CACHE_HANDLER

Values: strict | resilient

Default: strict

Deprecated: Use the Caching policy instead.

Defines how the authorization cache behaves when backend is unavailable. Strict will remove cached application when backend is unavailable. Resilient will do so only on getting authorization denied from backend.

APICAST_CONFIGURATION_CACHE

Values: a number

Default: 0

Specifies the interval (in seconds) that the configuration will be stored for. The value should be set to 0 (not compatible with boot value of APICAST_CONFIGURATION_LOADER) or more than 60. For example, if APICAST_CONFIGURATION_CACHE is set to 120, the gateway will reload the configuration from the API manager every 2 minutes (120 seconds). A value < 0 disables reloading.

APICAST_CONFIGURATION_LOADER

Values: boot | lazy

Default: lazy

Defines how to load the configuration. Boot will request the configuration to the API manager when the gateway starts. Lazy will load it on demand for each incoming request (to guarantee a complete refresh on each request APICAST_CONFIGURATION_CACHE should be 0).

APICAST_CUSTOM_CONFIG

Deprecated: Use policies instead.

Defines the name of the Lua module that implements custom logic overriding the existing APIcast logic.

APICAST_ENVIRONMENT

Default:

Value: string[:]

Example: production:cloud-hosted

Double colon (:) separated list of environments (or paths) APIcast should load. It can be used instead of -e or ---environment parameter on the CLI and for example stored in the container image as default environment. Any value passed on the CLI overrides this variable.

APICAST_LOG_FILE

Default: stderr

Defines the file that will store the OpenResty error log. It is used by bin/apicast in the error_log directive. Refer to NGINX documentation for more information. The file path can be either absolute, or relative to the prefix directory (apicast by default).

APICAST_LOG_LEVEL

Values: debug | info | notice | warn | error | crit | alert | emerg

Default: warn

Specifies the log level for the OpenResty logs.

APICAST_ACCESS_LOG_FILE

Default: stdout

Defines the file that will store the access logs.

APICAST_OIDC_LOG_LEVEL

Values: debug | info | notice | warn | error | crit | alert | emerg

Default: err

Allows to set the log level for the logs related to OpenID Connect integration.

APICAST_MANAGEMENT_API

Values:

  • disabled: completely disabled, just listens on the port
  • status: only the /status/ endpoints enabled for health checks
  • debug: full API is open

The Management API is powerful and can control the APIcast configuration. You should enable the debug level only for debugging.

APICAST_MODULE

Default: apicast

Deprecated: Use policies instead.

Specifies the name of the main Lua module that implements the API gateway logic. Custom modules can override the functionality of the default apicast.lua module. See an example of how to use modules.

APICAST_OAUTH_TOKENS_TTL

Values: a number

Default: 604800

When configured to authenticate using OAuth, this param specifies the TTL (in seconds) of the tokens created.

APICAST_PATH_ROUTING

Values:

  • true or 1 for true
  • false, 0 or empty for false

When this parameter is set to true, the gateway will use path-based routing in addition to the default host-based routing. The API request will be routed to the first service that has a matching mapping rule, from the list of services for which the value of the Host header of the request matches the Public Base URL.

APICAST_POLICY_LOAD_PATH

Default: APICAST_DIR/policies

Value: string[:]

Example: ~/apicast/policies:$PWD/policies

Double colon (:) separated list of paths where APIcast should look for policies. It can be used to first load policies from a development directory or to load examples.

APICAST_PROXY_HTTPS_CERTIFICATE_KEY

Default:

Value: string

Example: /home/apicast/my_certificate.key

The path to the key of the client SSL certificate.

APICAST_PROXY_HTTPS_CERTIFICATE

Default:

Value: string

Example: /home/apicast/my_certificate.crt

The path to the client SSL certificate that APIcast will use when connecting with the upstream. Notice that this certificate will be used for all the services in the configuration.

APICAST_PROXY_HTTPS_PASSWORD_FILE

Default:

Value: string

Example: /home/apicast/passwords.txt

Path to a file with passphrases for the SSL cert keys specified with APICAST_PROXY_HTTPS_CERTIFICATE_KEY.

APICAST_PROXY_HTTPS_SESSION_REUSE

Default: on

Values:

  • on: reuses SSL sessions.
  • off: does not reuse SSL sessions.

APICAST_REPORTING_THREADS

Default: 0

Value: integer >= 0

Experimental: Under extreme load might have unpredictable performance and lose reports.

Value greater than 0 is going to enable out-of-band reporting to backend. This is a new experimental feature for increasing performance. Client won’t see the backend latency and everything will be processed asynchronously. This value determines how many asynchronous reports can be running simultaneously before the client is throttled by adding latency.

APICAST_RESPONSE_CODES

Values:

  • true or 1 for true
  • false, 0 or empty for false

Default: <empty> (false)

When set to true, APIcast will log the response code of the response returned by the API backend in 3scale. In some plans this information can later be consulted from the 3scale admin portal. Find more information about the Response Codes feature on the 3scale support site.

APICAST_SERVICES_LIST

Value: a comma-separated list of service IDs

Used to filter the services configured in the 3scale API Manager, and only use the configuration for specific services in the gateway, discarding those services' IDs that are not specified in the list. Service IDs can be found on the Dashboard > APIs page, tagged as ID for API calls.

APICAST_SERVICE_${ID}_CONFIGURATION_VERSION

Replace ${ID} with the actual Service ID. The value should be the configuration version you can see in the configuration history on the Admin Portal. Setting it to a particular version will prevent it from auto-updating and will always use that version.

APICAST_WORKERS

Default: auto

Values: number | auto

This is the value that will be used in the nginx worker_processes directive. By default, APIcast uses auto, except for the development environment where 1 is used.

BACKEND_ENDPOINT_OVERRIDE

URI that overrides backend endpoint from the configuration. Useful when deploying outside OpenShift deployed AMP. Example: https://backend.example.com.

OPENSSL_VERIFY

Values:

  • 0, false: disable peer verification
  • 1, true: enable peer verification

Controls the OpenSSL Peer Verification. It is off by default, because OpenSSL can’t use system certificate store. It requires custom certificate bundle and adding it to trusted certificates.

It is recommended to use https://github.com/openresty/lua-nginx-module#lua_ssl_trusted_certificate and point to to certificate bundle generated by export-builtin-trusted-certs.

REDIS_HOST

Default: 127.0.0.1

APIcast requires a running Redis instance for OAuth 2.0 Authorization code flow. REDIS_HOST parameter is used to set the hostname of the IP of the Redis instance.

REDIS_PORT

Default: 6379

APIcast requires a running Redis instance for OAuth 2.0 Authorization code flow. REDIS_PORT parameter can be used to set the port of the Redis instance.

REDIS_URL

Default: no value

APIcast requires a running Redis instance for OAuth 2.0 Authorization code flow. REDIS_URL parameter can be used to set the full URI as DSN format like: redis://PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/DB. Takes precedence over REDIS_PORT and REDIS_HOST.

RESOLVER

Allows to specify a custom DNS resolver that will be used by OpenResty. If the RESOLVER parameter is empty, the DNS resolver will be autodiscovered.

THREESCALE_CONFIG_FILE

Path to the JSON file with the configuration for the gateway. The configuration can be downloaded from the 3scale admin portal using the URL: <schema>://<admin-portal-domain>/admin/api/nginx/spec.json (Example: https://account-admin.3scale.net/admin/api/nginx/spec.json).

When the gateway is deployed using Docker, the file has to be injected to the docker image as a read only volume, and the path should indicate where the volume is mounted, i.e. path local to the docker container.

You can find sample configuration files in examples folder.

It is required to provide either THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT or THREESCALE_CONFIG_FILE (takes precedence) for the gateway to run successfully.

THREESCALE_DEPLOYMENT_ENV

Values: staging | production

Default: production

The value of this environment variable will be used to define the environment for which the configuration will be downloaded from 3scale (Staging or Production), when using new APIcast.

The value will also be used in the header X-3scale-User-Agent in the authorize/report requests made to 3scale Service Management API. It is used by 3scale just for statistics.

THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT

URI that includes your password and portal endpoint in the following format: <schema>://<password>@<admin-portal-domain>. The <password> can be either the provider key or an access token for the 3scale Account Management API. <admin-portal-domain> is the URL used to log into the admin portal.

Example: https://access-token@account-admin.3scale.net.

When THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT environment variable is provided, the gateway will download the configuration from 3scale on initializing. The configuration includes all the settings provided on the Integration page of the API(s).

It is required to provide either THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT or THREESCALE_CONFIG_FILE (takes precedence) for the gateway to run successfully.

OPENTRACING_TRACER

Example: jaeger

This environment variable controls which tracing library will be loaded, right now, there’s only one opentracing tracer available, jaeger.

If empty, opentracing support will be disabled.

OPENTRACING_CONFIG

This environment variable is used to determine the config file for the opentracing tracer, if OPENTRACING_TRACER is not set, this variable will be ignored.

Each tracer has a default configuration file: * jaeger: conf.d/opentracing/jaeger.example.json

You can choose to mount a different configuration than the provided by default by setting the file path using this variable.

Example: /tmp/jaeger/jaeger.json

OPENTRACING_HEADER_FORWARD

Default: uber-trace-id

This environment variable controls the HTTP header used for forwarding opentracing information, this HTTP header will be forwarded to upstream servers.

APICAST_HTTPS_PORT

Default: no value

Controls on which port APIcast should start listening for HTTPS connections. If this clashes with HTTP port it will be used only for HTTPS.

APICAST_HTTPS_CERTIFICATE

Default: no value

Path to a file with X.509 certificate in the PEM format for HTTPS.

APICAST_HTTPS_CERTIFICATE_KEY

Default: no value

Path to a file with the X.509 certificate secret key in the PEM format.

all_proxy, ALL_PROXY

Default: no value Value: string Example: http://forward-proxy:80

Defines a HTTP proxy to be used for connecting to services if a protocol-specific proxy is not specified. Authentication is not supported.

http_proxy, HTTP_PROXY

Default: no value Value: string Example: http://forward-proxy:80

Defines a HTTP proxy to be used for connecting to HTTP services. Authentication is not supported.

https_proxy, HTTPS_PROXY

Default: no value Value: string Example: https://forward-proxy:443

Defines a HTTP proxy to be used for connecting to HTTPS services. Authentication is not supported.

no_proxy, NO_PROXY

Default: no value Value: string\[,<string>\]; *Example: foo,bar.com,.extra.dot.com

Defines a comma-separated list of hostnames and domain names for which the requests should not be proxied. Setting to a single * character, which matches all hosts, effectively disables the proxy.

Chapter 8. Code Libraries

3scale plugins allow you to connect to the 3scale architecture in a variety of core programming languages. Plugins can be deployed anywhere to act as control agents for your API traffic. Download the latest version of the plugin and gems for the programming language of your choice along with their corresponding documentation below.

You can also find us on GitHub. For other technical details, refer to the technical overview.

8.1. Python

Download the code here.

Standard distutils installation – unpack the file and from the new directory run:

sudo python setup.py install

Or you can put ThreeScale.py in the same directory as your program. See the README for some usage examples.

8.2. Ruby gem

You can download from GitHub or install it directly using:

gem install 3scale_client

8.3. Perl

Download the code bundle here.

It requires:

  • » LWP::UserAgent (installed by default on most systems)
  • » XML::Parser (now standard in perl >= 5.6)

Run this to install into the default library location:

perl Makefile.PL && make install

Run this for further install options:

make help

8.4. PHP

Download the code here and drop into your code directory – see the README in the bundle.

8.5. Java

Download the JAR bundle here.

Just unpack it into a directory and then run the maven build.

8.6. .NET

Download the code here, and see the bundled README.txt for instructions.

8.7. Node.js

Download the code here,or install it through the package manager npm:

npm install 3scale

Chapter 9. Plugin Setup

By the time you complete this tutorial, you’ll have configured your API to use the available 3scale code plugins to manage access traffic.

There are several different ways to add 3scale API Management to your API – including using APIcast (API gateway), Amazon API Gateway with Lambda, 3scale Service Management API, or code plugins. This tutorial drills down into how to use the code plugin method to get you set up.

9.1. How plugins work

3scale API plugins are available for a variety of implementation languages including Java, Ruby, PHP, .NET, and others – the full list can be found in the code libraries section. The plugins provide a wrapper for the 3scale Service Management API. Find the Service Management API in the 3scale ActiveDocs, available in your Admin Portal, under the Documentation → 3scale API Docs section, to enable:

  • API access control and security
  • API traffic reporting
  • API monetization

This wrapper connects back into the 3scale system to set and manage policies, keys, rate limits, and other controls that you can put in place through the interface. Check out the Getting Started guide to see how to configure these elements.

Plugins are deployed within your API code to insert a traffic filter on all calls as shown in the figure.

echo api

9.2. Step 1: Select your language and download the plugin

Once you’ve created your 3scale account (signup here), navigate to the code libraries section on this site and choose a plugin in the language you plan to work with. Click through to the code repository to get the bundle in the form that you need.

If your language is not supported or listed, let us know and we’ll inform you of any ongoing support efforts for your language. Alternatively, you can connect directly to the 3scale Service Management API.

9.3. Step 2: Check the metrics you’ve set for your API

As described in the API definition tutorial, you can configure multiple metrics and methods for your API on the API control panel. Each metric and method has a system name that will be required when configuring your plugin. You can find the metrics in API > Definition area of your Admin Portal.

API definition

For more advanced information on metrics, methods, and rate limits see the specific tutorial on rate limits.

9.4. Step 3: Install the plugin code to your application

Armed with this information, return to the code and add the downloaded code bundle to your application. This step varies for each type of plugin, and the form that it takes depends on the way each language framework uses libraries. For the purposes of this tutorial, this example will proceed with Ruby plugin instructions. Other plugins integration details are included in the README documentation of each repository.

This library is distributed as a gem, for which Ruby 2.1 or JRuby 9.1.1.0 are minimum requirements:

gem install 3scale_client

Or alternatively, download the source code from GitHub.

If you are using Bundler, please add this to your Gemfile:

gem '3scale_client'

and do a bundle install.

If you are using Rails' config.gems, put this into your config/environment.rb

config.gem '3scale_client'

Otherwise, require the gem in whatever way is natural to your framework of choice.

Then, create an instance of the client:

client = ThreeScale::Client.new(service_tokens: true)
Note

unless you specify service_tokens: true you will be expected to specify a provider_key parameter, which is deprecated in favor of Service Tokens:

client = ThreeScale::Client.new(provider_key: 'your_provider_key')

This will comunicate with the 3scale platform SaaS default server.

If you want to create a Client with a given host and port when connecting to an on-premise instance of the 3scale platform, you can specify them when creating the instance:

client = ThreeScale::Client.new(service_tokens: true, host: 'service_management_api.example.com', port: 80)

or

client = ThreeScale::Client.new(provider_key: 'your_provider_key', host: 'service_management_api.example.com', port: 80)

Because the object is stateless, you can create just one and store it globally. Then you can perform calls in the client:

  client.authorize(service_token: 'token', service_id: '123', usage: usage)
  client.report(service_token: 'token', service_id: '123', usage: usage)

If you had configured a (deprecated) provider key, you would instead use:

client.authrep(service_id: '123', usage: usage)
Note

service_id is mandatory since November 2016, both when using service tokens and when using provider keys

Note

You might use the option warn_deprecated: false to avoid deprecation warnings. This is enabled by default.

SSL and Persistence

Starting with version 2.4.0 you can use two more options: secure and persistent like:

client = ThreeScale::Client.new(provider_key: '...', secure: true, persistent: true)

secure

Enabling secure will force all traffic going through HTTPS. Because estabilishing SSL/TLS for every call is expensive, there is persistent.

persistent

Enabling persistent will use HTTP Keep-Alive to keep open connection to our servers. This option requires installing gem net-http-persistent.

9.5. Step 4: Add calls to authorize as API traffic arrives

The plugin supports the 3 main calls to the 3scale backend:

  • authrep grants access to your API and reports the traffic on it in one call.
  • authorize grants access to your API.
  • report reports traffic on your API.

9.5.1. Usage on authrep mode

You can make request to this backend operation using service_token and service_id, and an authentication pattern like user_key, or app_id with an optional key, like this:

response = client.authrep(service_token: 'token', service_id: 'service_id', app_id: 'app_id', app_key: 'app_key')

Then call the success? method on the returned object to see if the authorization was successful.

if response.success?
  # All fine, the usage will be reported automatically. Proceeed.
else
  # Something's wrong with this application.
end

The example is using the app_id authentication pattern, but you can also use other patterns such as user_key.

Example:

class ApplicationController < ActionController
  # Call the authenticate method on each request to the API
  before_filter :authenticate

  # You only need to instantiate a new Client once and store it as a global variable
  # If you used a provider key it is advisable to fetch it from the environment, as
  # it is secret.
  def create_client
    @@threescale_client ||= ThreeScale::Client.new(service_tokens: true)
  end

  # To record usage, create a new metric in your application plan. You will use the
  # "system name" that you specifed on the metric/method to pass in as the key to the usage hash.
  # The key needs to be a symbol.
  # A way to pass the metric is to add a parameter that will pass the name of the metric/method along
  #
  # Note that you don't always want to retrieve the service token and service id from
  # the parameters - this will depend on your application.
  def authenticate
    response = create_client.authrep(service_token: params['service_token']
                                     service_id: params['service_id'],
                                     app_id: params['app_id'],
                                     app_key: params['app_key'],
                                     usage: { params['metric'].to_sym => 1 })
    if response.success?
      return true
      # All fine, the usage will be reported automatically. Proceeed.
    else
      # Something's wrong with this application.
      puts "#{response.error_message}"
      # raise error
    end
  end
end

9.6. Step 5: Deploy and run traffic

Once the required calls are added to your code, you can deploy (ideally to a staging/testing environment) and make API calls to your endpoints. As the traffic reaches the API, it will be filtered by the plugin and keys checked against issues API credentials. Refer to the Getting Started guide for how to generate valid keys – a set will have also been created as sample data in your 3scale account.

To see if traffic is flowing, log in to your API Admin Portal and navigate to the Analytics tab – there you will see traffic reported via the plugin.

hello world app traffic

Once the application is making calls to the API, they will become visible on the statistics dashboard and the Statistics > Usage page for more detailed view.

If you’re receiving errors in the connection, you can also check the "Errors" menu item under Monitoring.

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