transflect

Transflect

Transflect is a Kubernetes operator that uses Istio to set up Envoy's gRPC-JSON transcoding, mapping HTTP/JSON APIs to gRPC services. The transcoding is applied to Kubernetes deployments with transflect-specific annotations. gRPC server reflection is required.

Transflect creates a HTTP/JSON or REST API that is fully defined in the .proto files of the gRPC service, similar to how Google Cloud Endpoints define their HTTP/JSON APIs.

What problem does transflect solve?

Transflect moves HTTP/JSON to gRPC mapping into the service mesh, just as other common (micro-)service requirements like mTLS or observability have been moved out of the application logic into the cluster infrastructure. Benefits include lower developer effort, better decoupling, consistent results across application frameworks and languages.

Transcoding in Action

You can try out transflect locally without Kubernetes or Istio. Transflect can generate a gRPC-JSON transcoding Envoy configuration for an Envoy proxy run in front of your local gRPC service.

Pre-requisites: git, curl, docker (tested with version 20.10). Other tools, including Envoy, are bootstrapped with hermit.

Clone this repo and build transflect

. ./bin/activate-hermit
make install

Start a gRPC server with gRPC server reflection

make run-testserver # starts a gRPC server on :9090, use your command instead

In a second terminal generate the Envoy config and start the Envoy proxy

transflect --plaintext --format envoy --http-port 9999 localhost:9090 envoy.yaml
envoy -c envoy.yaml

In a third terminal test the HTTP/JSON API

curl localhost:9999/api/echo/hello -d '{"message": "👋"}'

with expected output

{ "response": "And to you: 👋" }

Usage

Annotate your .proto files

Use the google.api.http option to annotate gRPC service methods with their HTTP/JSON API mappings

rpc GetShelf(GetShelfRequest) returns (Shelf) {
  option (google.api.http) = { get: "/v1/shelves/{shelf}" };
}

message GetShelfRequest {
  int64 shelf = 1;
}

If there is no annotation specified transflect auto-generates {post: "/api/<pkg>.<service>/<method>"}. See google/api/http.proto for more details on http annotations.

Annotate your deployment

Annotate your deployment with transflect.cash.squareup.com/port: "<gRPC-port>" to tell transflect to set up transcoding

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: your-deployment
  annotations:
    transflect.cash.squareup.com/port: '9090'
# ...

You will need transflect running in your cluster for the annotation to have an effect. See deployment/transflect.yaml for a sample transflect Deployment used in integration tests.

You can pull the pre-built transflect docker image from Dockerhub with docker pull cashapp/transflect.

Local development

Pre-requisites: git, curl, docker (tested with version 20.10). Other tools are bootstrapped with hermit.

Activate your hermit environment with

. ./bin/activate-hermit

For a first time setup of the local k3d cluster, your root password is required. The setup updates /etc/hosts with an entry for the local Docker registry used by the cluster. Run

make setup

You can build and test locally, run CI integration tests and see make targets with

make
make ci
make help

For a quick-feedback development cycle you can run the transflect operator on your host machine (e.g. Mac laptop), outside the cluster

make cluster-create                        # Create lightweight local cluster
kubectl apply -f deployment/guppyecho.yaml # Add sample gRPC deployment
kubectl create namespace transflect        # namespace used for leader-election
make run-local-operator                    # Start transflect on host machine

Use Ctrl + \ to instantly shutdown the local operator with SIGQUIT. SIGINT will first clean up resources.

Modify the operator sources and re-run make run-local-operator.

To clean-up, you can remove the entire local cluster with make cluster-delete or reduce it to the initial bare-bones installation with make cluster-clean.

Under the hood

Follow the local cluster guide to set up a lightweight test cluster with k3d and see transflect in action on Kubernetes. The same setup is used in CI and integration tests.

Read up on the inner workings of transflect to better understand which events transflect observes in the Kubernetes cluster and what resources it creates.

Copyright 2021 Square, Inc.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.