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Version: 13.x (Current)

Fabric BFF

Fabric BFF, as suggested by the name, works as Backend For Frontend for Control Plane UI and it mediates requests between the frontend and Control Plane service. Besides, it exposes the Websocket interface that enables live updates on Control Plane UI and the JSON RPC APIs for controlling Fast Data state.

Configuration​

Configuration of Fabric BFF is a straightforward process that involves setting up a ConfigMap and specifying essential environment variables.

Environment Variables​

Fabric BFF can be customized using the following environment variables:

NameRequiredDescriptionDefault Value
HTTP_PORT-This variable determines the TCP port where the HTTP controller binds its listener3000
LOG_LEVEL-Specify the centralized application log level, choosing from options such as debug, error, info, trace or warninfo
BFF_CONFIGURATION_FILEPATH-Set the location of the configuration file~/.fd/data-fabric-bff/config.json
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT-The URL to a GRPC endpoint of an OpenTelemetry Collector.
Specifying this value enables the support for OpenTelemetry tracing

Config Map​

The configuration of the service is handled by a JSON file whose location is defined by the BFF_CONFIGURATION_FILEPATH. When instantiating Control Plane application from Marketplace, Fabric BFF service configuration is generated with a dedicated Config Map, named fabric-bff-configuration. This file contains a template configuration that should help in configuring the service.

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In the paragraphs below are explained the main properties of the Fabric BFF configuration file.

Console Communication​

In order for Control Plane application to know which Runtimes are available for monitoring, and therefore which ones can be included in Runtime Views, the service needs to contact Mia-Platform Console and retrieve the list of Projects that should be accessible from this Control Plane instance.

To achieve so, it is first necessary that your Company Owner creates a dedicated Service Account on your Mia-Platform Console instance and assign to it the proper permissions for listing the Console projects of interest.

Good practices in permissions assignment

Pay attention to the level of access to the resources that you assign to the Service Account. For Control Plane use case, a good practice may be to assign the role of guest at Company level while granting the reporter role to all the projects that should be visible by Control Plane.
About permissions assignment, it is possible to go even more granular in case you want to allow visibility only to a subset of runtime environments of a specific project. In fact, to do that, you may opt to assign the role of guest even at Project level while granting the reporter role solely to those runtime environments that should be visible by Control Plane.

Once the service account has been registered, your Company Owner needs to hand over to you its credentials, which are:

  • client-id → unique identifier generated for this the service account
  • [Client Secret Basic] client-secret → a string representing the secret needed by the service account to authenticate
  • [Private Key JWT] client-key-id → unique identifier of the key employed for generating for this the service account
  • [Private Key JWT] private-key → private key in PEM format

These details then should be inserted in your Fabric BFF service configuration under the console property. In particular, the fields to be set are:

  • target → specifies the base URL of your Mia-Platform Console instance
  • auth → defines how the Fabric BFF service should authenticate on Mia-Platform Console APIs, that is the service account credentials
caution

It is responsibility of your Company Owner to ensure that service account credentials are properly processed according to your company security policies.

Furthermore, it is of extreme importance understanding that any Control Plane user will be able to list the project name and available environments of all the projects that can be accessed by the service account configured on Fabric BFF.

This is and example of console property configuration:

{
  "console": {
    "target": "https://<your-mia-platform-console-url>",
    "auth": {
      "type": "oauth2",
      "flow": "client_credentials",
      "tokenEndpoint": "/api/m2m/oauth/token",
      "credentials": {
        "clientId": "<service-account-client-id>",
        "clientSecret": "<service-account-client-secret>"
      }
    }
  }
  // ...other fabric bff configurations
}
tip

The following properties support secret resolution:

  • console.target
  • console.auth.credentials.clientId
  • console.auth.credentials.clientKeyId
  • console.auth.credentials.privateKey

Control Plane Communication​

Communication between Fabric BFF and Control Plane services occur both via gRPC and HTTP REST requests. For this reason its necessary to configure on the Fabric BFF the addresses where to reach Control Plane service. This can done by setting the properties rest and grpc of controlPlane field in the Fabric BFF configuration. In both properties, the target field should be set to the address where Control Plane service exposes the corresponding one.

Here can be found an example of configuration that assumes Fabric BFF and Control Plane services are deployed within the same K8s namespace:

{
  // ...other fabric bff configurations
  "controlPlane": {
    "rest": {
      "target": "<control-plane-service-name>"                // when protocol is http, it is not necessary specifying it. When port is not specified, it is assumed the 80 is employed
    },
    "grpc": {
      "target": "http://<control-plane-service-name>:50051"   // it is important to notice that GRPC connection uses a different port from the REST target
    }
  },
  // ...other fabric bff configurations
}

Persistence Layer​

info

Currently only MongoDB is supported as persistence layer for storing relevant data, such as the one related to operations' auditing.

caution

The MongoDB database selected for storing Control Plane data must be configured to have replicaSet enabled, since Fabric BFF exploits features that can be used only when a replicaSet is available.

In order to carry out all its operations, Fabric BFF requires a persistence layer where relevant information, such as auditing details, are stored. This configuration can be set under the persistence.configuration key of the configuration file. The main properties are:

  • url → the connection string to your MongoDB instance;
  • database → the database name where to search for the collections relevant to Fabric BFF service. Please notice that setting this property will override the database name potentially set in the connection string;

An example of persistence configuration can be seen below:

{
  // ...other fabric bff configurations
  "persistence": {
    "type": "mongodb",
    "configuration": {
      "url": "mongodb://<server>:27017/<default-database>?replicaSet=local",
      "database": "<data-fabric-database-name>"
    }
  },
  // ...other fabric bff configurations
}
tip

The following properties support secret resolution:

  • persistence.configuration.url
  • persistence.configuration.database

Service Settings​

Additionally, the Fabric BFF service itself has a set of properties for changing its behavior. Here are listed the available ones within settings properties:

  • apiPrefix → the base path applied to all the exposed routes. It defaults to /;
  • auditUserHeader → specifies in which HTTP header can be found the user identifier set by the authentication system. The value of this header will be employed to correlate requests stored by the auditing system with the user that performed them. When using Mia-Platform Authentication and Authorization services this property can be set to miauserid.
    In case it is not set the auditing system does not correlate users with requests;

Here can be found a configuration example:

{
  // ...other fabric bff configurations
  "settings": {
    "apiPrefix": "/",
    "auditUserHeader": "miauserid"
  }
}

Endpoints​

In the table below is provided the list of endpoints that should be defined in Console and assigned to Fabric BFF service.

EndpointRewrite Base PathMicroserviceDescription
/fast-data/fast-datafabric-bffGroups all the requests related to Control Plane operations

Routes​

Under the endpoint specified above, the following routes are served by Fabric BFF

RouteTypeMethodDescription
/fast-data/feedbackWebsocketGETOpens a websocket connection with the client to receive updates
of runtimes and pipelines
/fast-data/controlRESTHEADVerifies whether the pipeline change state action can be carried
out by current user
/fast-data/controlRESTPOSTReceives JSON-RPC from the frontend to change pipelines state
/fast-data/*REST*Other routes are forwarded towards Control Plane service.
For more details please read corresponding documentation