[openstack-dev] [horizon] REST and Django

Tihomir Trifonov t.trifonov at gmail.com
Wed Dec 10 11:02:27 UTC 2014 

Richard, thanks for the reply,


I agree that the given example is not a real REST. But we already have the
REST API - that's Keystone, Nova, Cinder, Glance, Neutron etc, APIs. So
what we plan to do here? To add a new REST layer to communicate with other
REST API? Do we really need Frontend-REST-REST architecture ? My opinion is
that we don't need another REST layer as we currently are trying to go away
from the Django layer, which is the same - another processing layer.
Although we call it REST proxy or whatever - it doesn't need to be a real
REST, but just an aggregation proxy that combines and forwards some
requests with adding minimal processing overhead. What makes sense for me
is to keep the authentication in this layer as it is now - push a cookie to
the frontend, but the REST layer will extract the auth tokens from the
session storage and prepare the auth context for the REST API request to OS
services. This way we will not expose the tokens to the JS frontend, and
will have strict control over the authentication. The frontend will just
send data requests, they will be wrapped with auth context and forwarded.

Regarding the existing issues with versions in the API - for me the
existing approach is wrong. All these fixes were made as workarounds. What
should have been done is to create abstractions for each version and to use
a separate class for each version. This was partially done for the
keystoneclient in api/keystone.py, but not for the forms/views, where we
still have if-else for versions. What I suggest here is to have
different(concrete) views/forms for each version, and to use them according
the context. If the Keystone backend is v2.0 - then in the Frontend use
keystone2() object, otherwise use keystone3() object. This of course needs
some more coding, but is much cleaner in terms of customization and
testing. For me the current hacks with 'if keystone.version == 3.0' are
wrong at many levels. And this can be solved now. *The problem till now was
that we had one frontend that had to be backed by different versions of
backend components*. *Now we can have different frontends that map to
specific backend*. That's how I understand the power of Angular with it's
views and directives. That's where I see the real benefit of using
full-featured frontend. Also imagine how easy will be then to deprecate a
component version, compared to what we need to do now for the same.

Otherwise we just rewrite the current Django middleware with another
DjangoRest middleware and don't change anything, we don't fix the problems.
We just move them to another place.

I still think that in Paris we talked about a new generation of the
Dashboard, a different approach on building the frontend for OpenStack.
What I've heard there from users/operators of Horizon was that it was
extremely hard to add customizations and new features to the Dashboard, as
all these needed to go through upstream changes and to wait until next
release cycle to get them. Do we still want to address these concerns and
how? Please, correct me if I got things wrong.


On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Richard Jones <r1chardj0n3s at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Sorry I didn't respond to this earlier today, I had intended to.
>
> What you're describing isn't REST, and the principles of REST are what
> have been guiding the design of the new API so far. I see a lot of value in
> using REST approaches, mostly around clarity of the interface.
>
> While the idea of a very thin proxy seemed like a great idea at one point,
> my conversations at the summit convinced me that there was value in both
> using the client interfaces present in the openstack_dashboard/api code
> base (since they abstract away many issues in the apis including across
> versions) and also value in us being able to clean up (for example, using
> "project_id" rather than "project" in the user API we've already
> implemented) and extend those interfaces (to allow batched operations).
>
> We want to be careful about what we expose in Horizon to the JS clients
> through this API. That necessitates some amount of code in Horizon. About
> half of the current API for keysone represents that control (the other half
> is docstrings :)
>
>
>      Richard
>
>
> On Tue Dec 09 2014 at 9:37:47 PM Tihomir Trifonov <t.trifonov at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Sorry for the late reply, just few thoughts on the matter.
>>
>> IMO the REST middleware should be as thin as possible. And I mean thin in
>> terms of processing - it should not do pre/post processing of the requests,
>> but just unpack/pack. So here is an example:
>>
>> instead of making AJAX calls that contain instructions:
>>
>> ​​
>>> POST --json --data {"action": "delete", "data": [ {"name":
>>> "item1"}, {"name": "item2"}, {"name": "item3" ]}
>>
>>
>> I think a better approach is just to pack/unpack batch commands, and
>> leave execution to the frontend/backend and not middleware:
>>
>>
>> ​​
>>> POST --json --data {"
>>> ​batch
>>> ":
>>> ​[
>>> {​
>>> "
>>> ​
>>> action"
>>> ​ : "delete"​
>>> ,
>>> ​"payload": ​
>>> {"name": "item1"}
>>> ​,
>>> {​
>>> "
>>> ​
>>> action"
>>> ​ : "delete"​
>>> ,
>>> ​
>>> "payload":
>>> ​
>>> {"name": "item
>>> ​2
>>> "}
>>> ​,
>>> {​
>>> "
>>> ​
>>> action"
>>> ​ : "delete"​
>>> ,
>>> ​
>>> "payload":
>>> ​
>>> {"name": "item
>>> ​3
>>> "}
>>> ​ ] ​
>>> ​
>>> ​
>>> }
>>
>>
>> ​The idea is that the middleware should not know the actual data. It
>> should ideally just unpack the data:
>>
>> ​​responses = []
>>>
>>
>> for cmd in
>>> ​ ​
>>> ​
>>> ​
>>> request.POST['batch']:​
>>
>>
>>> ​
>>> ​​responses
>>> ​.append(​
>>> ​
>>> getattr(controller, cmd['action']
>>> ​)(**
>>> cmd['​payload']
>>> ​)​)
>>>
>>
>>> ​return responses​
>>>
>>
>>
>> ​and the frontend(JS) will just send batches of simple commands, and will
>> receive a list of responses for each command in the batch. The error
>> handling will be done in the frontend​(JS) as well.
>>
>> ​
>>
>> For the more complex example of 'put()' where we have dependent objects:
>>
>> project = api.keystone.tenant_get(request, id)
>>> kwargs = self._tenant_kwargs_from_DATA(request.DATA, enabled=None)
>>> api.keystone.tenant_update(request, project, **kwargs)
>>
>>
>>
>> In practice the project data should be already present in the
>> frontend(assuming that we already loaded it to render the project
>> form/view), so
>>
>> ​
>> ​
>> POST --json --data {"
>> ​batch
>> ":
>> ​[
>> {​
>> "
>> ​
>> action"
>> ​ : "tenant_update"​
>> ,
>> ​"payload": ​
>> {"project": js_project_object.id, "name": "some name", "prop1": "some
>> prop", "prop2": "other prop, etc."}
>> ​
>> ​ ] ​
>> ​
>> ​
>> }​
>>
>> So in general we don't need to recreate the full state on each REST call,
>> if we make the Frontent full-featured application. This way - the frontend
>> will construct the object, will hold the cached value, and will just send
>> the needed requests as single ones or in batches, will receive the response
>> from the API backend, and will render the results. The whole processing
>> logic will be held in the Frontend(JS), while the middleware will just act
>> as proxy(un/packer). This way we will maintain just the logic in the
>> frontend, and will not need to duplicate some logic in the middleware.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 4:45 PM, Adam Young <ayoung at redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>>>  On 12/02/2014 12:39 AM, Richard Jones wrote:
>>>
>>> On Mon Dec 01 2014 at 4:18:42 PM Thai Q Tran <tqtran at us.ibm.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>  I agree that keeping the API layer thin would be ideal. I should add
>>>> that having discrete API calls would allow dynamic population of table.
>>>> However, I will make a case where it *might* be necessary to add
>>>> additional APIs. Consider that you want to delete 3 items in a given table.
>>>>
>>>> If you do this on the client side, you would need to perform: n * (1
>>>> API request + 1 AJAX request)
>>>> If you have some logic on the server side that batch delete actions: n
>>>> * (1 API request) + 1 AJAX request
>>>>
>>>> Consider the following:
>>>> n = 1, client = 2 trips, server = 2 trips
>>>> n = 3, client = 6 trips, server = 4 trips
>>>> n = 10, client = 20 trips, server = 11 trips
>>>> n = 100, client = 200 trips, server 101 trips
>>>>
>>>> As you can see, this does not scale very well.... something to
>>>> consider...
>>>>
>>>  This is not something Horizon can fix.  Horizon can make matters
>>> worse, but cannot make things better.
>>>
>>> If you want to delete 3 users,   Horizon still needs to make 3 distinct
>>> calls to Keystone.
>>>
>>> To fix this, we need either batch calls or a standard way to do
>>> multiples of the same operation.
>>>
>>> The unified API effort it the right place to drive this.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  Yep, though in the above cases the client is still going to be
>>> hanging, waiting for those server-backend calls, with no feedback until
>>> it's all done. I would hope that the client-server call overhead is
>>> minimal, but I guess that's probably wishful thinking when in the land of
>>> random Internet users hitting some provider's Horizon :)
>>>
>>>  So yeah, having mulled it over myself I agree that it's useful to have
>>> batch operations implemented in the POST handler, the most common operation
>>> being DELETE.
>>>
>>>  Maybe one day we could transition to a batch call with user feedback
>>> using a websocket connection.
>>>
>>>
>>>       Richard
>>>
>>>>  Richard Jones ---11/27/2014 05:38:53 PM---On Fri Nov 28 2014 at
>>>> 5:58:00 AM Tripp, Travis S <travis.tripp at hp.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> From: Richard Jones <r1chardj0n3s at gmail.com>
>>>> To: "Tripp, Travis S" <travis.tripp at hp.com>, OpenStack List <
>>>> openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org>
>>>> Date: 11/27/2014 05:38 PM
>>>> Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [horizon] REST and Django
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri Nov 28 2014 at 5:58:00 AM Tripp, Travis S <*travis.tripp at hp.com*
>>>> <travis.tripp at hp.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>    Hi Richard,
>>>>
>>>>    You are right, we should put this out on the main ML, so copying
>>>>    thread out to there.  ML: FYI that this started after some impromptu IRC
>>>>    discussions about a specific patch led into an impromptu google hangout
>>>>    discussion with all the people on the thread below.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thanks Travis!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    As I mentioned in the review[1], Thai and I were mainly discussing
>>>>    the possible performance implications of network hops from client to
>>>>    horizon server and whether or not any aggregation should occur server side.
>>>>      In other words, some views  require several APIs to be queried before any
>>>>    data can displayed and it would eliminate some extra network requests from
>>>>    client to server if some of the data was first collected on the server side
>>>>    across service APIs.  For example, the launch instance wizard will need to
>>>>    collect data from quite a few APIs before even the first step is displayed
>>>>    (I’ve listed those out in the blueprint [2]).
>>>>
>>>>    The flip side to that (as you also pointed out) is that if we keep
>>>>    the API’s fine grained then the wizard will be able to optimize in one
>>>>    place the calls for data as it is needed. For example, the first step may
>>>>    only need half of the API calls. It also could lead to perceived
>>>>    performance increases just due to the wizard making a call for different
>>>>    data independently and displaying it as soon as it can.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Indeed, looking at the current launch wizard code it seems like you
>>>> wouldn't need to load all that data for the wizard to be displayed, since
>>>> only some subset of it would be necessary to display any given panel of the
>>>> wizard.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    I tend to lean towards your POV and starting with discrete API
>>>>    calls and letting the client optimize calls.  If there are performance
>>>>    problems or other reasons then doing data aggregation on the server side
>>>>    could be considered at that point.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I'm glad to hear it. I'm a fan of optimising when necessary, and not
>>>> beforehand :)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    Of course if anybody is able to do some performance testing between
>>>>    the two approaches then that could affect the direction taken.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I would certainly like to see us take some measurements when
>>>> performance issues pop up. Optimising without solid metrics is bad idea :)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     Richard
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    [1]
>>>>    *https://review.openstack.org/#/c/136676/8/openstack_dashboard/api/rest/urls.py*
>>>>    <https://review.openstack.org/#/c/136676/8/openstack_dashboard/api/rest/urls.py>
>>>>    [2]
>>>>    *https://blueprints.launchpad.net/horizon/+spec/launch-instance-redesign*
>>>>    <https://blueprints.launchpad.net/horizon/+spec/launch-instance-redesign>
>>>>
>>>>    -Travis
>>>>
>>>>    *From: *Richard Jones <*r1chardj0n3s at gmail.com*
>>>>    <r1chardj0n3s at gmail.com>>
>>>> * Date: *Wednesday, November 26, 2014 at 11:55 PM
>>>> * To: *Travis Tripp <*travis.tripp at hp.com* <travis.tripp at hp.com>>,
>>>>    Thai Q Tran/Silicon Valley/IBM <*tqtran at us.ibm.com*
>>>>    <tqtran at us.ibm.com>>, David Lyle <*dklyle0 at gmail.com*
>>>>    <dklyle0 at gmail.com>>, Maxime Vidori <*maxime.vidori at enovance.com*
>>>>    <maxime.vidori at enovance.com>>, "Wroblewski, Szymon" <
>>>>    *szymon.wroblewski at intel.com* <szymon.wroblewski at intel.com>>,
>>>>    "Wood, Matthew David (HP Cloud - Horizon)" <*matt.wood at hp.com*
>>>>    <matt.wood at hp.com>>, "Chen, Shaoquan" <*sean.chen2 at hp.com*
>>>>    <sean.chen2 at hp.com>>, "Farina, Matt (HP Cloud)" <
>>>>    *matthew.farina at hp.com* <matthew.farina at hp.com>>, Cindy Lu/Silicon
>>>>    Valley/IBM <*clu at us.ibm.com* <clu at us.ibm.com>>, Justin
>>>>    Pomeroy/Rochester/IBM <*jpomero at us.ibm.com* <jpomero at us.ibm.com>>,
>>>>    Neill Cox <*neill.cox at ingenious.com.au* <neill.cox at ingenious.com.au>
>>>>    >
>>>> * Subject: *Re: REST and Django
>>>>
>>>>    I'm not sure whether this is the appropriate place to discuss this,
>>>>    or whether I should be posting to the list under [Horizon] but I think we
>>>>    need to have a clear idea of what goes in the REST API and what goes in the
>>>>    client (angular) code.
>>>>
>>>>    In my mind, the thinner the REST API the better. Indeed if we can
>>>>    get away with proxying requests through without touching any *client code,
>>>>    that would be great.
>>>>
>>>>    Coding additional logic into the REST API means that a developer
>>>>    would need to look in two places, instead of one, to determine what was
>>>>    happening for a particular call. If we keep it thin then the API presented
>>>>    to the client developer is very, very similar to the API presented by the
>>>>    services. Minimum surprise.
>>>>
>>>>    Your thoughts?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         Richard
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    On Wed Nov 26 2014 at 2:40:52 PM Richard Jones <
>>>>    *r1chardj0n3s at gmail.com* <r1chardj0n3s at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     Thanks for the great summary, Travis.
>>>>
>>>>       I've completed the work I pledged this morning, so now the REST
>>>>       API change set has:
>>>>
>>>>       - no rest framework dependency
>>>>       - AJAX scaffolding in openstack_dashboard.api.rest.utils
>>>>       - code in openstack_dashboard/api/rest/
>>>>       - renamed the API from "identity" to "keystone" to be consistent
>>>>       - added a sample of testing, mostly for my own sanity to check
>>>>       things were working
>>>>
>>>>       *https://review.openstack.org/#/c/136676*
>>>>       <https://review.openstack.org/#/c/136676>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>             Richard
>>>>
>>>>       On Wed Nov 26 2014 at 12:18:25 PM Tripp, Travis S <
>>>>       *travis.tripp at hp.com* <travis.tripp at hp.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     Hello all,
>>>>
>>>>          Great discussion on the REST urls today! I think that we are
>>>>          on track to come to a common REST API usage pattern.  To provide quick
>>>>          summary:
>>>>
>>>>          We all agreed that going to a straight REST pattern rather
>>>>          than through tables was a good idea. We discussed using direct get / post
>>>>          in Django views like what Max originally used[1][2] and Thai also
>>>>          started[3] with the identity table rework or to go with djangorestframework
>>>>          [5] like what Richard was prototyping with[4].
>>>>
>>>>          The main things we would use from Django Rest Framework were
>>>>          built in JSON serialization (avoid boilerplate), better exception handling,
>>>>          and some request wrapping.  However, we all weren’t sure about the need for
>>>>          a full new framework just for that. At the end of the conversation, we
>>>>          decided that it was a cleaner approach, but Richard would see if he could
>>>>          provide some utility code to do that much for us without requiring the full
>>>>          framework.  David voiced that he doesn’t want us building out a whole
>>>>          framework on our own either.
>>>>
>>>>          So, Richard will do some investigation during his day today
>>>>          and get back to us.  Whatever the case, we’ll get a patch in horizon for
>>>>          the base dependency (framework or Richard’s utilities) that both Thai’s
>>>>          work and the launch instance work is dependent upon.  We’ll build REST
>>>>          style API’s using the same pattern.  We will likely put the rest api’s in
>>>>          horizon/openstack_dashboard/api/rest/.
>>>>
>>>>          [1]
>>>>          *https://review.openstack.org/#/c/133178/1/openstack_dashboard/workflow/keypair.py*
>>>>          <https://review.openstack.org/#/c/133178/1/openstack_dashboard/workflow/keypair.py>
>>>>          [2]
>>>>          *https://review.openstack.org/#/c/133178/1/openstack_dashboard/workflow/launch.py*
>>>>          <https://review.openstack.org/#/c/133178/1/openstack_dashboard/workflow/launch.py>
>>>>          [3]
>>>>          *https://review.openstack.org/#/c/133767/8/openstack_dashboard/dashboards/identity/users/views.py*
>>>>          <https://review.openstack.org/#/c/133767/8/openstack_dashboard/dashboards/identity/users/views.py>
>>>>          [4]
>>>>          *https://review.openstack.org/#/c/136676/4/openstack_dashboard/rest_api/identity.py*
>>>>          <https://review.openstack.org/#/c/136676/4/openstack_dashboard/rest_api/identity.py>
>>>>          [5] *http://www.django-rest-framework.org/*
>>>>          <http://www.django-rest-framework.org/>
>>>>
>>>>          Thanks,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     Travis_______________________________________________
>>>>          OpenStack-dev mailing list
>>>>          OpenStack-dev at lists.openstack.org
>>>>
>>>>          http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>> Tihomir Trifonov
>>  _______________________________________________
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-- 
Regards,
Tihomir Trifonov
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