[openstack-dev] Writing Openstack Nova API extensions

Trinath Somanchi trinath.somanchi at gmail.com
Thu Sep 27 04:58:35 UTC 2012


Hi Kevin-

I have few more doubts.

[1] What are Member action and Collection actions? I see them in the Source
code, of the ResourceExtension. Can you shower some light on these terms,
their usage and significance.

Thanking you.

-
Trinath



On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 9:53 PM, Trinath Somanchi <
trinath.somanchi at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Kevin
>
> Thanks lot for reply..
>
> I'll understand the code and start my new extension.
>
> Thanks a lot again for this precious help.
>
> -
> Trinath
> On Sep 26, 2012 9:46 PM, "Kevin L. Mitchell" <kevin.mitchell at rackspace.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 2012-09-26 at 21:00 +0530, Trinath Somanchi wrote:
>> > 1. What are Controller and Resource extensions? How do they differ?
>>
>> OK, so term definition time.  Nova uses the Routes[1] software to map
>> URI/HTTP method to a function to call.  Routes happens to provide a
>> short-cut interface for setting up the routes for REST-style calls
>> (which is what Nova uses); the call is resource()[2].
>>
>> Now, in Nova's world, a "Resource" is one of these top-level things; it
>> has operations like index() ("GET <resource>"), show() ("GET
>> <resource>/<id>"), update() ("PUT <resource>/<id>"), delete() ("DELETE
>> <resource>/<id>"), etc.  (See the Routes documentation for the full
>> list.)  A ResourceExtension is an extension that allows creation of one
>> of these resources, and the "parent" stuff allows you to link that
>> resource to be under another resource, i.e., "GET <parent>/<resource>"
>> maps to index(), "GET <parent>/<resource>/<id>" maps to show(), etc.
>>
>> A ControllerExtension, on the other hand, allows you to extend an
>> existing resource—usually one of the basic Nova resources
>> (i.e., /servers).  With this kind of extension, you can add an
>> "action" (not your current use case, but see below), or you can wrap an
>> existing (and only an existing!) method of that resource.  This
>> limitation is why I suggested you should try using a ResourceExtension
>> for your use case—there's no way to add a new method to an existing
>> resource without modifying the code that creates that existing resource.
>>
>> > 2. How do client requests differ for these type of extensions? Can you
>> > give some examples on this.
>>
>> Client requests don't differ at all for these types of extensions; it's
>> the semantics of what they mean.
>>
>> I should note that I can see a way to use a ControllerExtension to
>> retrieve metadetails, but you wouldn't be doing GET /servers/metadetail;
>> you would be doing POST /servers/action, and the body that you POSTed
>> would convey the request for metadetails.  (You could also use this body
>> to convey the query parameters.)  This is called an "action", and if you
>> want to see examples of how this works, check out the admin_actions.py
>> extension you've already looked at—it defines a whole bunch of actions.
>>
>> The Nova API system is rather complicated, and the best documentation
>> for how to modify and extend it is still the code, unfortunately.  I
>> hope that I've helped you understand it a bit more clearly, but keep in
>> mind that much of what I've stated here is from memory, so it might be
>> worth reading the code for yourself to make sure I got it right :)
>>
>> --
>>
>> [1] http://routes.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html
>> [2] http://routes.readthedocs.org/en/latest/restful.html
>> --
>> Kevin L. Mitchell <kevin.mitchell at rackspace.com>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> OpenStack-dev mailing list
>> OpenStack-dev at lists.openstack.org
>> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
>>
>


-- 
Regards,
----------------------------------------------
Trinath Somanchi,
+91 9866 235 130
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