Extensibility: Providers

Meshery offers Providers as a point of extensibility. It has a built-in Local Provider, named “None” and supports Remote Providers that are designed to be pluggable. Remote Providers offer a point of extension to users / integrators to deliver enhanced functionality such as authentication and authorization, using Meshery as a platform.

  1. Extensibility points offer clean separation of Meshery’s core functionality versus plugin functionality.
    • MeshMap is an example of a feature to be delivered via Remote Provider.
  2. Remote Providers should be able to offer custom RBAC, custom UI components, and custom backend components
    • Dynamically loadable frameworks need to be identified or created to serve each of these purposes.

What functionality do Providers offer?

The functionalities offerred by a Remote Provider may vary broadly between providers. Meshery offers extension points that Remote Providers are able to use to inject various functionalities, functionalities that are specific to that provider. Some examples include:

  • Authentication and Authorization
    • Examples: session management, two factor authentication, LDAP integration.
  • Long-Term Persistence
    • Examples: Storage and retrieval of performance test results.
    • Examples: Storage and retrieval of user preferences.
  • Enhanced Visualization
    • Examples: Creation of a visual service mesh topology.
    • Examples: Different charts (metrics), debug (log viewer), distributed trace explorers.
  • Reporting
    • Examples: Using Meshery’s GraphQL server to compose new dashboards.

Figure: Selecting a provider in Meshery

Types of providers

There are two types of providers defined in Meshery, local and remote.

  • The Local provider is built-into Meshery.
  • Remote providers can be implemented by anyone or an organization that wishes to integrate with Meshery. Any number of Remote providers may be available in your Meshery deployment.

Remote Providers

The use of a Remote Provider, puts Meshery into multi-user mode and requires user authentication. This provides security for the public-facing Meshery UI as the remote provider enforces identity with authentication and authorization. You should also use a remote provider when your use of Meshery is ongoing or used in a team environment (used by multiple people). This can be seen when using Meshery Playground, where a user is prompted to login through the Layer5 Meshery Cloud remote provider. Visit Meshery Playground to experience this.

A specific remote provider can be enforced in a Meshery instance by passing the name of the provider with the env variable PROVIDER.

Name: “Meshery” (default)

  • Enforces user authentication.
  • Long-term term persistence of test results.
  • Save environment setup.
  • Retrieve performance test results.
  • Retrieve conformance test results.
  • Free to use.

Local Provider

The use of the Local Provider, “None”, puts Meshery into a single-user mode and does not require authentication. Use the Local provider when your use of Meshery is intended to be shortlived.

Name: “None”

  • No user authentication.
  • Container-local storage of test results. Ephemeral.
  • Environment setup not saved.
  • No performance test result history.
  • No conformance test result history.
  • Free to use.

Design Principles: Meshery Remote Provider Framework

Meshery’s Remote Provider extensibility framework is designed to enable the following functionalities:

  1. Pluggable UI Functionality:
    • Out-of-tree custom UI components with seamless user experience.
    • A system of remote retrieval of extension packages (ReactJS components and Golang binaries).
  2. Pluggable Backend Functionality:
    • Remote Providers have any number of capabilities unbeknownst to Meshery.
  3. Pluggable AuthZ
    • Design an extensible role based access control system such that Remote Providers can determine their own set of controls. Remote Providers to return JWTs with custom roles, permission keys and permission keychains.

Building a Provider

Meshery interfaces with providers through a Go interface. The Provider implementations have to be placed in the code and compiled together today. A Provider instance will have to be injected into Meshery when the program starts.

Meshery keeps the implementation of Remote Providers separate so that they are brought in through a separate process and injected into Meshery at runtime (OR) change the way the code works to make the Providers invoke Meshery.

Remote Provider Extension Points

Interwoven into Meshery’s web-based user interface are a variety of extension points. Each extension point is carefully carved out to afford a seamless user experience. Each extension point is identified by a name and type. The following Meshery UI extension points are available:

Name Type Description
navigator Menu Items This is supposed to be a full page extension which will get a dedicated endpoint in the meshery UI. And will be listed in the meshery UI’s navigator/sidebar. Menu items may refer to full page extensions.
user_prefs Single Component This is supposed to be remote react components which will get placed in a pre-existing page and will not have a dedicated endpoint. As of now, the only place where this extension can be loaded is the “User Preference” section under meshery settings.
account Full Page Remote Reactjs components (or other) are placed in a pre-existing page and will have dedicated endpoint: /extension/account.
collaborator Single Component This is supposed to be remote react components which will get placed in a pre-existing page and will not have a dedicated endpoint. Currently, placed at the Header component of Mehery UI. Its work is to show active Meshery users under the same remote provider.
/extension/<your name here> Full Page The Provider package is unzipped into Meshery server filesystem under /app/provider-pkg/<package-name>.

Remote Providers must fulfill the following endpoints:

  1. /login - return valid token
  2. /logout - invalidating token
  3. /capabilities - return capabilities.json

UI Extension Points

All UI extensions will be hosted under the endpoint <mesheryserver:port/provider>.

UserPrefs

The UserPrefs extension point expects and loads a component to be displayed into /userpreferences page.

The Navigator extension point loads a set of menu items to be displayed in the menu bar on the left hand side of the Meshery UI.

Capabilities Endpoint Example

Meshery Server will proxy all requests to remote provider endpoints. Endpoints are dynamically determined and identified in the capabilities section of the /capabilities endpoint. Providers as an object have the following attributes (this must be returned as a response to /capabilities endpoint):


{
  "provider_type": "remote",
  "package_version": "v0.1.0",
  "package_url": "https://layer5labs.github.io/meshery-extensions-packages/provider.tar.gz",
  "provider_name": "Meshery",
  "provider_description": [
    "Persistent sessions",
    "Save environment setup",
    "Retrieve performance test results",
    "Free use"
  ],
  "extensions": {
    "navigator": [
      {
        "title": "MeshMap",
        "href": {
          "uri": "/meshmap",
          "external": false
        },
        "component": "/provider/navigator/meshmap/index.js",
        "icon": "/provider/navigator/img/meshmap-icon.svg",
        "link:": true,
        "show": true,
        "children": [
          {
            "title": "View: Single Mesh",
            "href": {
              "uri": "/meshmap/mesh/all",
              "external": false
            },
            "component": "/provider/navigator/meshmap/index.js",
            "icon": "/provider/navigator/img/singlemesh-icon.svg",
            "link": false,
            "show": true
          }
        ]
      }
    ],
    "account": [
      {
          "title": "Overview",
          "on_click_callback": 1,
          "href": {
              "uri": "/account/overview",
              "external": false
          },
          "component": "/provider/account/profile/overview.js",
          "link": true,
          "show": true,
          "type": "full_page"
      },
      {
          "title": "Profile",
          "on_click_callback": 1,
          "href": {
              "uri": "/account/profile",
              "external": false
          },
          "component": "/provider/account/profile/profile.js",
          "link": true,
          "show": true,
          "type": "full_page"
      },
      {
          "title": "API Tokens",
          "on_click_callback": 1,
          "href": {
              "uri": "/account/tokens",
              "external": false
          },
          "component": "/provider/account/profile/tokens.js",
          "link": true,
          "show": true,
          "type": "full_page"
      }
    ],
    "user_prefs": [
      {
        "component": "/provider/userprefs/meshmap-preferences.js"
      }
    ],
    "collaborator": [
      {
        "component": "/provider/collaborator/avatar.js"
      }
    ]
  },
  "capabilities": [
    {
        "feature": "sync-prefs",
        "endpoint": "/user/preferences"
    },
    {
        "feature": "persist-results",
        "endpoint": "/results"
    },
    {
        "feature": "persist-result",
        "endpoint": "/result"
    },
    {
        "feature": "persist-smi-results",
        "endpoint": "/smi/results"
    },
    {
        "feature": "persist-smi-result",
        "endpoint": "/smi/result"
    },
    {
        "feature": "persist-metrics",
        "endpoint": "/result/metrics"
    },
    {
        "feature": "persist-smp-test-profile",
        "endpoint": "/user/test-config"
    },
    {
        "feature": "persist-performance-profiles",
        "endpoint": "/user/performance/profiles"
    },
    {
        "feature": "persist-schedules",
        "endpoint": "/user/schedules"
    },
    {
        "feature": "persist-meshery-patterns",
        "endpoint": "/patterns"
    },
    {
        "feature": "persist-meshery-filters",
        "endpoint": "/filters"
    },
    {
        "feature": "persist-meshery-applications",
        "endpoint": "/applications"
    },
    {
        "feature": "persist-meshery-pattern-resources",
        "endpoint": "/patterns/resource"
    },
    {
        "feature": "meshery-patterns-catalog",
        "endpoint": "/patterns/catalog"
    },
    {
        "feature": "meshery-filters-catalog",
        "endpoint": "/filters/catalog"
    },
    {
        "feature": "clone-meshery-patterns",
        "endpoint": "/patterns/clone"
    },
    {
        "feature": "clone-meshery-filters",
        "endpoint": "/filters/clone"
    },
    {
        "feature": "share-designs",
        "endpoint": "/api/content/design/share"
    },
    {
        "feature": "persist-connection",
        "endpoint": "/api/connection"
    }
  ]
}

Meshery Server Registration

Every Meshery server is capable of registering itself with the remote provider, considering that remote provider supports this feature as a capability. On successful authentication with the remote provider, Meshery server registers itself by sending a POST request to the remote provider through the persist-connection capability. The body of the request should include information so as to uniquely indentify Meshery server and its status.

Example of the request body:



  {
    "server_id": "xxxx-xxxxx-xxxx-xxxx",
    "server_version": "vx.x.x",
    "server_build-sha": "xxxx-xxxxx",
    "server_location": "<protocol>://<hostname>:<port>”
  }

Configurable OAuth Callback URL

As of the release v0.5.39, Meshery Server has extended its capability to configure the callback URL for connected Remote Providers. This is helpful when you are deploying Meshery behind an ingress gateway or reverse proxy. You can specify a custom, redirect endpoint for the connected Remote Provider. Let’s understand this through an example deployment scenario below.

Example Deployment Scenario: Meshery Cloud, Istio, and Azure Kubernetes Service

User has deployed the Meshery behind a Istio Ingress Gateway and the Istio is also behind an Application Gateway (e.g. AKS Application Gateway). Generally, when you use a GitHub Remote Provider for authentication, it redirect the request to the Istio Ingress Gateway FQDN. In this setup, redirection won’t be successful because the Ingress Gateway is behind an additional Application Gateway. In this case, you have to define where the request should be redirected once it is authenticated from GitHub.

SOLUTION

You can define a custom callback URL by setting up the MESHERY_SERVER_CALLBACK_URL environment variable while installing Meshery.

Example using Helm

First, construct the URL in the format https://[CUSTOM_URL]/api/user/token

  • Where [CUSTOM_URL] is the URL where Meshery server will be or is installed. For example, https://k8s-staging.test.io/.
  • And api/user/token is the Auth Endpoint and is append at the end of your custom URL.

So, the final URL would look similar to https://k8s-staging.test.io/api/user/token

Note

Callback URL is not the same as Provider URL. In scenarios where Meshery server and Provider is installed on same server, pay attention to paths or subdomains.

Next, set the MESHERY_SERVER_CALLBACK_URL variable when running the helm install. Below is an example:


helm install meshery meshery/meshery --namespace meshery --set env.MESHERY_SERVER_CALLBACK_URL=https://k8s-staging.test.io/api/user/token

NOTE

If Meshery server is accessible in a path of the URL such as https://k8s-staging.test.io/meshery, then the callback URL will be https://k8s-staging.test.io/meshery/api/user/token.

Managing your Remote Provider Extension Code

Remote Provider extensions are kept out-of-tree from Meshery (server and UI). You might need to build your extensions under the same environment and set of dependencies as Meshery. The Meshery framework of extensibility has been designed such that in-tree extensions can be safely avoided while still providing a robust platform from which to extend Meshery’s functionality. Often, herein lies the delineation of open vs. closed functionality within Meshery. Remote Providers can bring (plugin) what functionality that they want behind this extensible interface (more about Meshery extensibility), at least that is up to the point that Meshery has provided a way to plug that feature in.

Offering out-of-tree support for Meshery extensions means that:

  1. source code to your Meshery extensions are not required to be open source,
  2. liability to Meshery’s stability is significantly reduced, avoiding potential bugs in extended components.

Through clearly defined extension points, Meshery extensions may be offered as closed source capabilities that plug into open source Meshery code. To facilitate integration of your Meshery extensions, you might automate the building and releasing of your separate, but interdependent code repositories. You will be responsible for sustaining both your ReactJS and Golang-based extensions.