Open Stack

On 09/11/2014 03:15 AM, Richard Jones wrote:
> [This is Horizon-related but affects every service in OpenStack, hence no
> filter in the subject]
>
> I would like for OpenStack to support browser-based Javascript API 
> clients.
> Currently this is not possible because of cross-origin resource 
> blocking in
> Javascript clients - that is, given some Javascript hosted on
> "https://horizon.company.com/" you cannot, for example, call from that
> Javascript code to an API on 
> "https://apis.company.com:5000/v2.0/tokens" to
> authenticate with Keystone.
>
> There are three solutions to this problem:
>
> 1. the Horizon solution, in which those APIs are proxied by a very thick
>    layer of additional Python API, plus some Python view code with some
>    Javascript on the top only calling the Horizon view code,
> 2. add CORS support to all the OpenStack APIs though a new WSGI middleware
>    (for example oslo.middleware.cors) and configured into each of the API
>    services individually since they all exist on different "origin"
>    host:port combinations, or
> 3. a new web service that proxies all the APIs and serves the static
>    Javascript (etc) content from the one origin (host). APIs are then 
> served
>    from new URL roots "/name/" where the name is from the serviceCatalog
>    entry. Static content can be served from "/static/". The 
> serviceCatalog from
>    keystone will be rewritten on the fly to point the API publicURLs 
> at the
>    new service. Requests are no longer cross-origin.
>
> I have implemented options 2 and 3 as an exercise to see how horrid 
> each one
> is.

I don't think these are mutually exclusive.  I can see people wanting 
either in some deployments.



>
>
> == CORS Middleware ==
>
> For those wanting a bit of background, I have written up a spec for 
> oslo that
> talks about how this could work: https://review.openstack.org/#/c/119485/
>
> The middleware option results in a reasonably nice bit of middleware. It's
> short and relatively easy to test. The big problem with it comes in
> configuring it in all the APIs. The configuration for the middleware takes
> two forms:
>
> 1. hooking oslo.middleware.cors into the WSGI pipeline (there's more than
>    one in each API),
> 2. adding the CORS configuration itself for the middleware in the 
> API's main
>    configuration file (eg. keystone.conf or nova.conf).
>
> So for each service, that's two configuration files *and* the kicker 
> is that
> the paste configuration file is non-trivially different in almost 
> every case.
This is one reason I thought that it should be done by auth_token 
middleware.  The other reason is that I don't think we want to blanket 
accept CORS from everywhere, but instead we should do so based on the 
service catalog.

This is for the non-trivial deployment case like MOC:

http://www.bu.edu/hic/projects/massachusetts-open-cloud/

Where one "Horizon" instance is going to have to talk to multiple, 
non-trusted instances for each of the services.  CORS should only be 
acceptable between services in the same service catalog.  Yes, I realize 
this is not security enforcment, it is just one step in the strategy.

For a POC deployment, for a small company, all-in-one,  what you are 
doing shouild be fine, but then, if you were running all of your 
services that way, in one web server, you wouldn't need CORS either.

So, lets have these two approaches work in parallel.  THe proxy will get 
things goint while we work out the CORS approach.

>
> That's a lot of work, and confusing for deployers. Configuration 
> management
> tools can ease *some* of this burden (the *.conf files) but those 
> paste files
> are a bit of a mess :(
>
> Once the config change is in place, it works (well, except for an 
> issue I ran
> into relating to oslo.middleware.sizelimit which I'll go into in another
> place).
>
> The implementation hasn't been pushed up for review as I'm not sure it 
> should
> be. I can do this if people wish me to.
>
>
> == New Single-Point API Service ==
>
> Actually, this is not horrid in any way - unless that publicURL rewriting
> gives you the heebie-jeebies.
>
> It works, and offers us some nice additional features like being able 
> to host
> the service behind SSL without needing to get a bazillion 
> certificates. And
> maybe load balancing. And maybe API access filtering.
>
> I note that https://openrepose.org already exists to be *something* like
> this, but it's not *precisely* what I'm proposing. Also Java euwww ;)
>
>
> So, I propose that the idea of CORS-in-all-the-things as an idea be
> put aside as unworkable.
>
> I intend to pursue the single-point API service that I have described as a
> way of moving forward in prototyping a pure-Javascript OpenStack 
> Dashboard.
>
>
>
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