astrohub

AstroHub

AstroHub is an in-memory request-response multiplexer for [micro]service oriented applications

Description

AstroHub is a service meant to sit between your "level 1" API servers or load balancers and your microservices. It allows services to communicate with one another through a centralized hub. This is the first in a set of Astro tools for building service oriented applications.

Details

AstroHub is written in Go, and leverages all of Go's robust realtime features to create a performant, low latency message bus.

AstroHub enables interaction with a microservice with a single request/response cycle. Microservices can interact with AstroHub using HTTP REST, or gRPC (coming soon). The Astro* spec will allow microservices to be deployed without any port requirements, ensuring easy deployments and no need for any centralized service discovery. The Astro* spec is still being designed, but the current iteration looks like so:

[Load Balancer] <--> [AstroServer(s)] <--> [AstroHub] <--> [Astro* Services]
												^
											Here we are

Documentation

Endpoints:

• Queue up a "job" and recieve a response: POST: /service/{name}

  • Request:

    • {name} should be the name of the service you would like a response from
    • The request body should be an encoded JSON string.
      • Note: AstroHub will have no knowledge of the request body, it will just pass along the encoded JSON. It is the responsibility of the receiving service to decode the data.

  • Response:

    • Response body will consist of a JSON encoded response from the target service.

• Get the next available "job" for a particular service: GET: /service/{name}/jobs

  • Request:

    • {name} should be the name of the service who's job you would like to process.

  • Response:

    • A JSON encoded representation of the job to be processed:

    {"id": [unique-uuid-v4 string], "originalRequest": [encoded JSON of original request]}

    • Note that the id will be used to post a response, so save it.

• Send a response to a job: POST: /jobs/{id}

  • Request:

    • {id} should be the id of the job you recieved using /service/{name}/jobs.
    • The request body should be a JSON encoded string of your response data.

  • Response:

    • You will recieve an empty status 200 OK response when your response was sent successfully, or an appropriate HTTP error code if there was an error.

Notes:

• Requests to /service/{name}/jobs can be long-lasting if no jobs are currently queued up. It may be smart to set timeouts on these requests and retry as appropriate. Astro* libraries will handle this automatically in the future. gRPC will also alleviate this issue.

• In the future, we will be providing an astro-go library (and possibly others) which will mimic the standard net/http http server, and will be compatible with AstroHub

• AstroHub is of course still in early development, so don't use it for anything important yet!

Coming soon:

• gRPC support for hub <--> service communication
  • client <--> hub communication will always be HTTP REST
• Docker image for easy deployment
• Authentication
• .Astrofile support (spec coming soon as well)