A sidecar container for Apicast, enabling proxy support

Why this project ?

Apicast is an API gateway that fetches his configuration and asks for authorization on the 3scale services (hosted in their cloud). The gateway, however, is deployed on-premise in the customer network.

More and more customers enforce the use of an HTTP proxy for outgoing connections. Sometimes, an authentication is required to connect to the proxy.

Currently, apicast does not fully support HTTP proxies. Hence this project provides a sidecar container for Apicast that enables HTTP proxies support.

This project implements:

• HTTP(S) Proxy support
• Configurable SSL/TLS truststore
• HTTP Basic Proxy authentication

How it works

This project is written in golang and uses the built-in proxy support of golang (net/http) to forward requests to the proxy.

Two HTTP ports are opened (9090 and 9091 by default), where the sidecar container listens for HTTP requests. Requests that go through port 9090 are forwarded to the 3scale admin portal over the proxy whereas requests that go through port 9091 are forwarded to the 3scale authorization backend (su1.3scale.net), over the proxy.

The admin portal and authorization backend URLs are set using the THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT and BACKEND_ENDPOINT_OVERRIDE environment variables.

Then, Apicast needs to be configured to talk to its sidecar container also using the THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT and BACKEND_ENDPOINT_OVERRIDE environment variables.

So, if you deployed your Apicast using the following environment variables:

THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT=https://secret@acme-admin.3scale.net
BACKEND_ENDPOINT_OVERRIDE=https://su1.3scale.net

Then, you would deploy the sidecar container with:

THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT=https://acme-admin.3scale.net
BACKEND_ENDPOINT_OVERRIDE=https://su1.3scale.net

And, you would update your Apicast configuration with the following environment variables:

THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT=http://secret@proxy:9090
BACKEND_ENDPOINT_OVERRIDE=http://proxy:9091

The proxy DNS name (proxy) depends on your installation method (classic, Docker, OpenShift). Read the following section for more details.

Deployment

Classic install

First, you will have to build the software. You can do it locally on your Mac using:

brew install golang
git clone https://github.com/nmasse-itix/apicast-sidecar-proxy.git
GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -o apicast-sidecar-proxy src/itix.fr/forward/main.go

If you run a RHEL or CentOS server, first install go as explained here and build the software:

git clone https://github.com/nmasse-itix/apicast-sidecar-proxy.git
go build -o apicast-sidecar-proxy src/itix.fr/forward/main.go

You can start the proxy by running:

export https_proxy="http://my.proxy:1234" # Adjust to your environment
export THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT="https://<TENANT>-admin.3scale.net"
export BACKEND_ENDPOINT_OVERRIDE="https://su1.3scale.net"
./apicast-sidecar-proxy

The proxy start listening by default on port 9090 (admin portal) and 9091 (backend). It will print on the standard output the requests as they go through the proxy.

If you need to close the current terminal and leave the proxy running, you can start it this way:

nohup ./apicast-sidecar-proxy &

If needed, you can stop the proxy with:

pkill apicast-sidecar-proxy

Once the proxy is running, check that it works and configure Apicast.

Run your apicast with specially crafted THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT and BACKEND_ENDPOINT_OVERRIDE environment variables:

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 --name apicast -e THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT=http://<ACCESS_TOKEN>@172.17.0.1:9090 -e BACKEND_ENDPOINT_OVERRIDE=http://172.17.0.1:9091 -e THREESCALE_DEPLOYMENT_ENV=staging 3scale-amp21/apicast-gateway

Note:

• the 172.17.0.1 is the IP address of your Docker host (the IP address of the docker0 interface). You might have to change the IP address in the command line above to match your environment.
• the <ACCESS_TOKEN> is your 3scale access token as explained here.

Docker

You can start the proxy using docker:

docker run -d --name=apicast-sidecar-proxy -p 9090:9090 -p 9091:9091 -e https_proxy=http://my.proxy:1234 -e THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT=https://<TENANT>-admin.3scale.net -e BACKEND_ENDPOINT_OVERRIDE=https://su1.3scale.net nmasse/apicast-sidecar-proxy

Verify that the container is running with:

docker ps

You can check the proxy logs using:

docker logs apicast-sidecar-proxy

You can stop the proxy with:

docker stop apicast-sidecar-proxy
docker rm apicast-sidecar-proxy

Once the proxy is running, check that it works and configure Apicast.

Run your apicast with specially crafted THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT and BACKEND_ENDPOINT_OVERRIDE environment variables:

docker inspect -f '{{.NetworkSettings.IPAddress}}' apicast-sidecar-proxy
PROXY_IP=$(docker inspect -f '{{.NetworkSettings.IPAddress}}' apicast-sidecar-proxy)
docker run -d -p 8080:8080 --name apicast -e THREESCALE_PORTAL_ENDPOINT=http://<ACCESS_TOKEN>@$PROXY_IP:9090 -e BACKEND_ENDPOINT_OVERRIDE=http://$PROXY_IP:9091 -e THREESCALE_DEPLOYMENT_ENV=staging 3scale-amp21/apicast-gateway

Note:

• you cannot use the --link switch of the docker run command since it uses entries in /etc/hosts that are not read by apicast
• the <ACCESS_TOKEN> is your 3scale access token as explained here.

OpenShift

The rest of this guide expects that your OpenShift environment is configured to work with proxies (as explained here).

TODO

Check that it works

There are some very rough surface checks that ensure the communication is working:

$ curl -D - http://localhost:9090/admin/api/accounts.xml 
HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><error>Access denied</error>

$ curl -D - http://localhost:9091/transactions/authorize.xml
HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
Content-Type: application/vnd.3scale-v2.0+xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><error code="provider_key_or_service_token_required">Provider key or service token are required</error>

In both cases, check that the return code is 403 and the response is in XML format.

Working with proxies that do SSL/TLS interception (MITM)

Sometimes, you might have to go through a proxy that does SSL/TLS interception (aka "Man-in-the-Middle"). In this case, when an SSL/TLS connection is made through the proxy, it hijacks the connection to present a custom certificate, and then decrypt and re-encrypt the SSL/TLS flow.

This kind of proxy can work with this project. You just have to get the proxy CA certificate and put it with the system CA certificates (truststore) in one of the standard locations.

See :

• https://golang.org/src/crypto/x509/root_unix.go
• https://golang.org/src/crypto/x509/root_linux.go

On OpenShift, you would use a configmap + a volume mount to do so. On Docker, you can either build a custom docker image or use a volume mount. On a classic install, just put the CA certificate in one of the one of the standard locations.

Development

Build

On Mac, you can use:

brew install golang
GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -o apicast-sidecar-proxy src/itix.fr/forward/main.go

Package

export VERSION=1.0
export DOCKER_USERNAME="nmasse"
git tag -a v$VERSION -m "Version $VERSION"
git push origin "v$VERSION"
docker build -t $DOCKER_USERNAME/apicast-sidecar-proxy:$VERSION .

Pushing your image to DockerHub (Optional)

To push the a new version to Dockerhub:

docker login -u "$DOCKER_USERNAME" https://index.docker.io/v1/
docker images $DOCKER_USERNAME/apicast-sidecar-proxy:$VERSION --format '{{ .ID }}'
docker tag $(docker images $DOCKER_USERNAME/apicast-sidecar-proxy:$VERSION --format '{{ .ID }}') index.docker.io/$DOCKER_USERNAME/apicast-sidecar-proxy:$VERSION
docker push index.docker.io/$DOCKER_USERNAME/apicast-sidecar-proxy:$VERSION

And to make it available by default (latest tag).

docker images $DOCKER_USERNAME/apicast-sidecar-proxy:$VERSION --format '{{ .ID }}'
docker tag $(docker images $DOCKER_USERNAME/apicast-sidecar-proxy:$VERSION --format '{{ .ID }}') index.docker.io/$DOCKER_USERNAME/apicast-sidecar-proxy:latest
docker push index.docker.io/$DOCKER_USERNAME/apicast-sidecar-proxy:latest