Go Fr

Advanced Guide

Inter-Service HTTP Calls

GoFr promotes microservice architecture and to facilitate the same, it provides the support to initialize HTTP services
at application level using AddHTTPService() method.

Support for inter-service HTTP calls provide the following benefits:

  1. Access to the methods from container - GET, PUT, POST, PATCH, DELETE.
  2. Logs and traces for the request.
  3. Circuit breaking for enhanced resilience and fault tolerance.
  4. Custom Health Check Endpoints

Usage

Registering a simple HTTP Service

GoFr allows registering a new HTTP service using the application method AddHTTPService().
It takes in a service name and service address argument to register the dependent service at application level.
Registration of multiple dependent services is quite easier, which is a common use case in a microservice architecture.

The services instances are maintained by the container.

Other provided options can be added additionally to coat the basic HTTP client with features like circuit-breaker and
custom health check and add to the functionality of the HTTP service.
The design choice for this was made such as many options as required can be added and are order agnostic,
i.e. the order of the options is not important.

Service names are to be kept unique to one service.

app.AddHTTPService(<service_name> , <service_address>)

Example

package main  
  
import (  
    "gofr.dev/pkg/gofr"  
)  
  
func main() {  
    // Create a new application  
    app := gofr.New()  
  
    // register a payment service which is hosted at http://localhost:9000  
    app.AddHTTPService("payment", "http://localhost:9000")  
  
    app.GET("/customer", Customer)  
  
    // Run the application  
    app.Run()  
}

Accessing HTTP Service in handler

The HTTP service client is accessible anywhere from gofr.Context that gets passed on from the handler.
Using the GetHTTPService method with the service name that was given at the time of registering the service,
the client can be retrieved as shown below:

svc := ctx.GetHTTPService(<service_name>)

func Customer(ctx *gofr.Context) (interface{}, error) {  
    // Get the payment service client  
    paymentSvc := ctx.GetHTTPService("payment")  
  
    // Use the Get method to call the GET /user endpoint of payments service  
    resp, err := paymentSvc.Get(ctx, "user", nil)  
    if err != nil {  
        return nil, err  
    }  
  
    defer resp.Body.Close()  
  
    body, err := io.ReadAll(resp.Body)  
    if err != nil {  
        return nil, err  
    }  
  
    return string(body), nil  
}

Additional Configurational Options

GoFr provides its user with additional configurational options while registering HTTP service for communication. These are:

  • APIKeyConfig - This option allows the user to set the API-Key Based authentication as the default auth for downstream HTTP Service.
  • BasicAuthConfig - This option allows the user to set basic auth (username and password) as the default auth for downstream HTTP Service.
  • OAuthConfig - This option allows user to add OAuth as default auth for downstream HTTP Service.
  • CircuitBreakerConfig - This option allows the user to configure the GoFr Circuit Breaker's threshold and interval for the failing downstream HTTP Service calls. If the failing calls exceeds the threshold the circuit breaker will automatically be enabled.
  • DefaultHeaders - This option allows user to set some default headers that will be propagated to the downstream HTTP Service every time it is being called.
  • HealthConfig - This option allows user to add the HealthEndpoint along with Timeout to enable and perform the timely health checks for downstream HTTP Service.
  • RetryConfig - This option allows user to add the maximum number of retry count if before returning error if any downstream HTTP Service fails.

Usage:

a.AddHTTPService("cat-facts", "https://catfact.ninja",  
    &service.APIKeyConfig{APIKey: "some-random-key"},  
    
    &service.BasicAuthConfig{  
       UserName: "gofr",  
       Password: "gofr",  
  },
    
    &service.CircuitBreakerConfig{  
       Threshold: 4,  
       Interval:  1 * time.Second,  
  },  
  
   &service.DefaultHeaders{Headers: map[string]string{"key": "value"}},  
 
   &service.HealthConfig{  
       HealthEndpoint: "breeds",  
  }, 
   
   &service.OAuthConfig{  
       ClientID:       "abc",  
       ClientSecret:   "abc",  
       TokenURL:       "http://test.com",  
       Scopes:         nil,  
       EndpointParams: nil,  
  },
    
  &service.RetryConfig{
      MaxRetries: 5
  },  
)
Next
HTTP Authentication