Elastic API exposure for Multi Cloud

This spec is to provide a framework for Multi-Cloud to expose API.

Problem Description

Multi-Cloud provides VIM API for other projects in ONAP. API will vary for different projects. However, Multi-Cloud exposes its API by static code. Current way of API exposing produces code duplications.

#. When a client creates a resource through Multi-Cloud, Multi-Cloud needs to convert the API request to back-end OpenStack API request and send to OpenStack. When a client requests a resource through Multi-Cloud, Multi-Cloud needs to retrieve OpenStack resource, converts to its API and reply to client. Even though the two conversion are the same thing with different directions, there are 2 sets of code for it.

#. Most of Multi-Cloud API shares same logic. But the code of this same logic are duplicated for every API.

Given the fact mentioned above, current code amount of Multi-Cloud are larger than it should be. It makes code maintaining be time-consuming and error-prone.

Besides, the swagger files that describe API of Multi-Cloud are maintained manually. It is thousands lines of code and hard for developers to maintain.

Proposed Change

This spec proposes using YAML files to describe Multi-Cloud API. A framework will also be provided. When Multi-Cloud services start up, the framework will read YAML files, parse them and generate API accordingly. Multi-Cloud can dynamically expose API in this way without changing its Python code. And developers only need to maintain YAML files that describe Multi-Cloud API. The YAML files are expected to be less amount than current way of API exposing, because it only contains metadata of Multi-Cloud API.

Using the proposal in this spec, metadata of API are defined in YAML files and logic of API handling are concentrated in the framework mentioned above. So that the code duplication can be eliminated.

To narrow down the scope of this spec, none of current Multi-Cloud API will be changed. This spec will ONLY focus on migrating Multi-Cloud API from current way to the proposed framework in this spec. However, migrating all API to the proposed framework is out of the scope of this spec. A set of API for one specific use case, for example VoLTE, will be migrated to proposed framework. Migrating all API can be implemented in other workitem(s) in future.

To narrow down the scope of this spec, a full, normative definition of API and resources will not be considered. Only partial API will be considered. But it can be implemented in other workitem(s) in future.

To narrow down the scope of this spec, only the functionality that Multi-Cloud has now will be considered and extension support will not be considered in this spec. But it can be implemented in other workitem(s) in future.

It should be noted that, though this spec focuses on how to convert northbound and southboud API, it doesn’t prevent tieing northbound API of MultCloud with other functionalities. In setion Definition of API, an example of API definition has been given, developer can add specific code/module path as a attribute(like handler) under path, instead of defining vim_path. By doing that, developer can tie the northbound API with specific code/module, and expose northbound API with any functionality. This spec just shows the capability of doing this by using the elastic API exposure framework, the implementation for now will still focus on the northbound and southboud API conversion.

It should be noted that there is a prior art in OpenStack “Gluon” [1] project which provides a model-driven framework to generate APIs based on model definitions in YAML. A full, normative definition and extension mechanism of “API Specification” [2] is available in Gluon. Although our current work has limited scope, for those who are interested in full normative definition and extension mechanism in our future work, please refer to those references in “Gluon” [1] project and its “API Specifications” [2].

Since the API are defined by YAML files, swagger files can also be generated from YAML files and exist without manually maintaining. The framework will cover the conversion from YAML file to swagger files.

To keep backward compatibility, the proposal in this spec will be bound to [MULTICLOUD-150]. This means that the proposal is only usable when evenlet with pecan is enabled. So that uses don’t care about this feature will not be affected.

Definition of API

Take the API of host as example. The API will be defined as follow. URLs of the API are defined under paths. There are several attributes for the API. The number of kinds of attributes is not constrained to following example, other attributes can be added if needed.

paths:
  /{vimid}/{tenantid}/hosts/{hostid}:
    parameters:
      - type: string
        format: uuid
        name: vimid
      - type: string
        format: uuid
        name: tenantid
      - type: string
        format: uuid
        name: hostid
    get:
      responses:
        success_code: 200
        description: content of host
        schema: host
    vim_path: {nova_endpoint}/os-hypervisors

parameters

parameters are the variables in the URL. It can be extracted from URL and then used in data retrieving and manipulating.

parameters are discriminated by name, and validated by type and format.

post, put, get, delete

These attributes represents the supported HTTP method. In above example, only get method is defined. When client sends other HTTP method to the URL, a 404 response will be returned.

responses defines the response of the request. success_code is the HTTP code in the response. description is an optional parameter. It describes the response. schema points to the RESTful resource that will be in the response body. In above example, the RESTful resource is host. It should be found in the RESTful resource definition section.

vim_path

vim_path defines the relative URL path of the southbound VIM. Multi-Cloud will use this path to retrieve data from VIM.

Definition of RESTful resource

Take the resource host as example. The resource will be defined as follow. Resources are defined under definitions. The are several attributes for the resource. The number of kinds of attributes is not constrained to following example, other attributes can be added if needed.

definitions:
  host:
    vim_resource: hypervisor
    properties:
      name:
        type: string
        required: true
        source: hypervisor.name
      cpu:
        type: integer
        minimal: 1
        source: hypervisor.vcpus
        action: copy
        required: true
      disk_gb:
        type: integer
        minimal: 0
        source: hypervisor.local_disk_size
        required: true
      memory_mb:
        type: integer
        minimal: 0
        source: hypervisor.memory_size
        required: true

vim_resource

vim_resource points to the resource that comes from southbound VIM. Multi-Cloud will use the resource to build its own resource.

properties

properties defines the properties of the resource. Each property has a name and several attributes. The number of kinds of attributes is not constrained to the example, other attributes can be added if needed.

type of property means the type of current property. It can be some simple data, like string or integer. It can also be some composite data like, object or array.

required of property means if this property is required for the resource. If it is required, missing this property will cause request failure. Default value of required is false.

source of property means that current property will be built from it. It is usually a property from vim_resource. By default, it will be the same property in vim_resource.

action of property means that current property will be build by using this action. By default, it will be copy, which means the data from property of VIM resource is copied to property of Multi-Cloud resource. Other actions can be defined for different scenarios.

minimal is one of the constraint of the property. It means the minimal possible value of the property. If value of the property is less than minimal value. The request will fail.

Swagger File generation

Multi-Cloud is using Swagger file to describe its API. It is maintained manually. Since this spec proposes to use YAML file to generate Multi-Cloud’s API, Swagger file can also be generated from YAML file. The API generating framework will also generate Swagger file.

Implementation

Work Items

  1. Add YAML parser for API and resource.

  2. Add REST client to call southbound VIM API.

  3. Add validator for resource.

  4. Add action for resouce.

  5. Add Swagger file generator.

  6. Migrate /{vimid}/{tenantid}/hosts/{hostid} as an example.