Microservices
SINCE VERSION 7.0
What are Microservices?
A microservice in PIPEFORCE is an application which runs inside a (Docker) container which in term runs inside the PIPEFORCE (Kubernetes) cluster. Such a microservice can communicate with other microservices inside the same namespace via messaging and REST. A namespace can “host” many such microservices:
PIPEFORCE offers a lot of toolings to develop, deploy and monitor your microservices in your namesace. This is called the Microservices Framework.
Microservice or App?
In general, you have three main possibilities to write a business application:
Using low code inside an app.
Using a microservice.
Combining both approaches.
Depending on the requirements you should select the right approach for your implementation.
In the table below you can see the pros and cons:
Implementation | Pros | Cons | Main purpose |
---|---|---|---|
App & Low Code, Pipelines | Easy to learn. No deep developer skills required. Very fast results possible. No compilation and build steps required. Huge set of out-of-the-box toolings like forms, lists, reports and utils available. Based on many pre-defined standards which can simplify maintenance and upgrading. | Limited to its main purposes. Requires a deployment process. | For data mappings and transformations, workflows and system integrations. Building frontend apps with forms, listings and basic reports. |
Microservice | Very flexible: You can use any programming language and libraries of your choice and you can develop any business complexity you like. | Requires developer skills and somebody who reviews and manages the architecture of the microservice. Requires a build and deployment process. | For complex business logics, running mainly as background services. |
It's also possible to combine apps and microservices in order to implement a single business solution:
The app should contain:
Connections to external systems
Data mappings and transformations
Forms and lists
Stateful workflows
The microservice should contain:
Complex business specific logic
Designing a Microservice
Typically a microservice is a relatively small application which has the responsibility about a concrete and well-defined part of an overall business process. How you slice the microservices depends on your requirements.
So before you start, you should be very clear, which parts should go into which microservices and which not at all.
See here for a good introduction how to design microservices: https://martinfowler.com/articles/break-monolith-into-microservices.html
Develop a Microservice
Developing a microservice typically means, developing a business application in the programming language of your choice.
As long as you can build and run the application inside a (Docker) container, you can also run it inside PIPEFORCE as microservice.
We suggest you to write your microservices in one of these languages since they are widely used, having a huge community and being well documented:
Python. For example using one of the official Docker images: python - Official Image | Docker Hub
Java. For example using one of the frameworks Spring, Quarkus or Helidon and one of the official Docker images: openjdk - Official Image | Docker Hub
NodeJS. For example using Typescript, ExpressJS and/or NestJS and one of the offcial Docker images: node - Official Image | Docker Hub
In our experience, Python is often a very good choice for a microservice language. Since it has the best trade-off between complexity and flexibility. But as always, it depends on your concrete requirements.
If you would like to start a microservice in Python, you can fork our template from GitHub and start coding it: GitHub - logabit/pipeforce-service-template-python: PIPEFORCE Microservice Template for Python
In order to allow your microservice to communicate with others, there are two common ways you can implement this:
Sync communication - Typically used with RESTful services inside PIPEFORCE.
Async communication - Typically used with RabbitMQ and messaging inside PIPEFORCE (preferred way).
Deploy / Start a Microservice
Once a microservice has been developed, it must be wrapped inside a (Docker) image in order to be able to deploy it into PIPEFORCE. The deployment cycle of a microservice in PIPEFORCE is always an 4-step task:
Build a (Docker) container image from the sources of your microservice.
Upload the container image to a container registry which is supported by PIPEFORCE (for example Docker Hub or the PIPEFORCE Container Registry).
Deploy the image from this registry into your PIPEFORCE namespace by using the command
service.start
.
These steps are typically automated by using a CI/CD tool like Jenkins, CircleCI, Travis or similar.
Furthermore, we suggest managing your source code using GitHub and connect your CI/CD tool, so it starts to build, test and deploy automatically every time, a new push to GitHub happened (or on other triggers like merging or tagging).
Also see these commands to manage the deployment of your services:
service.start - Starts a new service by deploying an image.
service.stop - Stops a running service.
service.status - Returns the status of a service.
Default ENV variables
Every time a service is started using the service.start
command, also some implicit default variables will be automatically passed to this container and can be accessed via the environment variables inside the container. These variables are:
ENV | Description |
---|---|
| The domain name used for the PIPEFORCE instance. For example |
| The cluster internal host name of the hub service in order to connect to. |
| The cluster internal host port in order to connect to. |
| The cluster internal url of the hub service in order to connect via REST for example. |
| The default dead letter queue used for RabbitMQ messaging. It is usually |
| The default messaging exchange used for RabbitMQ messaging. It is usually |
| The default messaging topic used for RabbitMQ messaging. It is usually the same as the default exchange. |
| The messaging host to connect to in order to register a RabbitMQ listener. See below in documentation how to optionally pass messaging username and password as a secret if required. They aren’t provided by default. |
| The messaging host to connect to in order to register a RabbitMQ listener. |
| The namespace of the instance this services runs inside. |
| The external url to the PIPEFORCE webui portal in order to refer to from inside a microservice. |
| The name of this custom service inside PIPEFORCE. |
| The staging mode, this namespace is running in. Usually one of |
Note: Since any value of these ENV variables could change over time, you should never persist them in your microservice!
Custom ENV variables
Additionally to these default environment variables, you can also add your custom ones by using the parameter env
on the command service.start
:
pipeline:
- service.start:
name: myservice
image: myimage
env:
MY_ENV: "myCustomValue"
Secret ENV variables
In case you would like to pass secret values to your service ENV variables, you have to do these steps:
Create a secret of type
secret-text
and with the service name as prefix in the secret store, like this:<yourservice>_<YOUR_SECRET_NAME>
.Use the custom uri
$uri:secret:<yourservice>_<YOUR_SECRET_NAME>
in the env parameter.
For example, lets assume you would like to start a service myservice
and pass a secret with custom name MY_SERVICE
to it. For this you have to create a secret with name myservice_MY_SECRET
in the secret store and then refer to it like this:
pipeline:
- service.start:
name: myservice
image: myimage
env:
MY_SECRET_ENV: $uri:secret:myservice_MY_SECRET
On startup of the service, the secret with name myservice_MY_SECRET
will be read from the secret store and passed to the container as environment variable MY_SECRET_ENV
. This way it is not required to store the secret in code.
Note: Only secrets having the same service name as prefix are allowed to be passed to this service. Any other secret cannot be passed to a service. This is for security reasons.
Since the secret is stored in the environment variable in plain text, make sure to pass secrets only along to trustworthy microservices which belong to your stack!
You can also define a default value for a secret. In case the secret could not be found in the secret store, the given default value will be used and passed as ENV variable value instead:
$uri:secret:myservice_MY_SECRET:someDefaultValue
Shared secret ENV variables
In case you would like to share a single secret across multiple services, you must prefix it with SHARED_
instead. Secrets prefixed with SHARED_
can be passed to any microservice without security check.
Lets assume you have created a secret with name SHARED_MY_SECRET
, then you can pass it to any service like this example shows:
Monitoring a microservice
Logging
Everything you log into the standard output of your microservice container can be later viewed by using the command log.list and specifying the name under which you have deployed the service. Example:
Additionally you can use the log listing in the web portal to filter and search the logs of your microservice:
Service Status
The Services view in the web portal will show you the deployment status of your services. Here you can install new services, see their status and stop running services:
Also see these commands to manage your services:
service.start - Starts a new service by deploying an image.
service.stop - Stops a running service.
service.status - Returns the status of a service.
Messaging in a Microservice
The preferred way each microservice inside PIPEFORCE can communicate with each other is by using messaging.
As message broker RabbitMQ is used by default.
If you're using one of our microservice templates, setting up a library to connect to RabbitMQ and creating the default channels and bindings is typically already done for you, or there is a best practise to do so.
Otherwise follow the documentation on the official RabbitMQ websites.
If you're interested in how to send and receive messages using pipelines, see Messaging and Events.
How to connect a Microservice with the message broker?
In case you have deployed your microservice using the command service.start
, then these environment variables will be automatically provided inside your microservice and can be used to connect to the RabbitMQ message broker:
PIPEFORCE_MESSAGING_HOST
= The cluster-internal hostname of the messaging service.PIPEFORCE_MESSAGING_PORT
= The cluster-internal port of the messaging service.
Additionally to these variables, you need to set the PIPEFORCE_MESSAGING_USERNAME
and PIPEFORCE_MESSAGING_PASSWORD
along with your service.start
command using the custom uri prefix $uri:secret
. Here is how to do it:
Create a new secret in your secret store with name
<yourservice>_messaging_username
and typesecret-text
and set the RabbitMQ username you would like to use to connect.Create a new secret in your secret store with name
<yourservice>_messaging_password
and typesecret-text
and set the RabbitMQ password you would like to use to connect.
Start your container using these env variables pointing to the secret store. Example:
This way, the sensitive values will be passed to your container without the requirement to store them into code or refer from external systems.
In case you're using one of the custom service templates from PIPEFORCE, messaging will be automatically setup for you using the ENV variables mentioned before.
In case you're using your own framework, how to setup your client in order to connect, depends on your programming language the RabbitMQ client. See the official documentation: https://www.rabbitmq.com/devtools.html
The next step is to create the queues required by your service. See the Default Queue Naming guide below.
Now create a binding between your queues, the default topic pipeforce.hub.default.topic
and the routing key pattern of messages your service is interested in.
Also remember to setup the dead leader queue in order to not lose any message as mentioned below.
Default Queue Naming
By default any microservice is responsible to setup and manage its own queues.
Each queue should contain always equal message types. So, for different messages, create additional queues.
Queues created by a microservice should follow this naming convention:
Whereas <serviceName>
is the name of the microservice and <queueName>
can be any name of the queue. For example:
Do not use dashes -
but replace them by underscores _
. For example instead of:
Use this name:
Default Topic
PIPEFORCE automatically creates a default topic exchange on startup with this name: pipeforce.default.topic
.
PIPEFORCE core services are configured in a way that any event which happens there or which is sent using the event.send
command will also be send to this default topic.
In case a microservice wants to listen to a certain type of message with a given routing key, it needs to create a binding between the topic pipeforce.default.topic
and the queue you want to “feed” this message into.
See here for more details about topics, routings and queues: https://www.rabbitmq.com/tutorials/tutorial-five-python.html
Default Dead Letter Queue
Additionally, a default Dead Letter Queue is automatically configured by PIPEFORCE those name is given by the ENV variable PIPEFORCE_MESSAGING_DEFAULT_DLQ
.
Any other queue can be configured in a way to forward messages to this queue if one these rules apply:
The message has been expired (was not processed within a given time period).
The message has been declined (nack) by a consumer.
The maximum amount of messages has been reached for a given queue.
This default dead letter queue is configured in a way to lazy keep the messages and store them into the persistence layer, so no messages get lost.
Typically in order to setup a dead letter queue for your custom queue, you have to set these arguments accordingly:
How to set these arguments in your microservice depends on your selected programming language and the RabbitMQ client implementation you're using. See documentation for details: https://www.rabbitmq.com/dlx.html
In case you're using Java + Spring as microservice language for example, it could look like this:
Default Message Keys
Here you can find the default message keys, PIPEFORCE will use for internal events and send messages with these keys to the default topic pipeforce.hub.default.topic
. You can subscribe to these keys using a binding between your queue and this default topic.
You can also describe to multiple keys using the *
and #
patterns. For example in order to listen to all property events, you could subscribe to the key pattern property.*
.
See here for more details about message key patterns on topics: https://www.rabbitmq.com/tutorials/tutorial-five-python.html
Message / Event Key | Description |
---|---|
| In case a new delivery was created. |
| In case a new public link for a delivery was created. |
| In case a public link for a delivery has been deleted. |
| In case the attachments of a delivery have been deleted. |
| In case the deletion of the attachments have been failed. |
| In case hub has context has been started is ready to accept requests but right before the startup phase. |
| In case hub context is about to start. Note: This event is not send to the topic queue since at the time of this, the RabbitMQ connector is not setup yet. This event is just for internal use in hub. Its mentioned here just for completeness reasons. |
| In case hub setup has been finished. |
| In case the hub setup is about to be started. This is right after the context has been started but before the setup has been fully finished. |
| In case a potential bruteforce attach has been detected by IAM. |
| In case a login using IAM has been failed. |
| In case a property in the property store has been copied. See PropertyCopiedEvent.java for implementation details. |
| In case a property in the property store has been created. See PropertyCreatedEvent.java for implementation details. |
| In case a property in the property store has been deleted. See PropertyDeletedEvent.java for implementation details. |
| In case a property in the property store has been moved. See PropertyMovedEvent.java for implementation details. |
| In case a property in the property store has been moved. See PropertyUpdatedEvent.java for implementation details. |
| A new usagelog entry was created in the property store. See UsageLogCreatedEvent.java for implementation details. |
| In case a webhook call has been occurred. The <name_of_webhook> depends on the setup. You can use the pattern webhook.# to listen to all webhooks. |
Depends on key param of command event.send. | Furthermore whenever the command event.send is called, the payload of this event is also forwarded to the default hub topic using the key param of this command as the messaging key and the body as the payload of the message. |