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Resource and Controller Developer Guide

This is a whistle-stop tour through adding a new resource type and controller to Consul 🚂

Resource Schema

Adding a new resource type begins with defining the object schema as a protobuf message, in the appropriate package under proto-public.

$ mkdir proto-public/pbfoo/v1alpha1

// proto-public/pbfoo/v1alpha1/foo.proto
syntax = "proto3";

import "pbresource/resource.proto";
import "pbresource/annotations.proto";

package hashicorp.consul.foo.v1alpha1;

message Bar {
  option (hashicorp.consul.resource.spec) = {scope: SCOPE_NAMESPACE};
  
  string baz = 1;
  hashicorp.consul.resource.ID qux = 2;
}

$ make proto

Next, we must add our resource type to the registry. At this point, it's useful to add a package (e.g. under internal) to contain the logic associated with this resource type.

The convention is to have this package export variables for its type identifiers along with a method for registering its types:

// internal/foo/types.go
package foo

import (
	"github.com/hashicorp/consul/internal/resource"
	pbv1alpha1 "github.com/hashicorp/consul/proto-public/pbfoo/v1alpha1"
	"github.com/hashicorp/consul/proto-public/pbresource"
)

func RegisterTypes(r resource.Registry) {
	r.Register(resource.Registration{
		Type:  pbv1alpha1.BarType, 
		Scope: resource.ScopePartition,
		Proto: &pbv1alpha1.Bar{},
	})
}

Note that Scope reference the scope of the new resource, resource.ScopePartition mean that resource will be at the partition level and have no namespace, while resource.ScopeNamespace mean it will have both a namespace and a partition.

Update the NewTypeRegistry method in type_registry.go to call your package's type registration method:

import (
	// …
	"github.com/hashicorp/consul/internal/foo"
	// …
)

func NewTypeRegistry() resource.Registry {
	// …
    foo.RegisterTypes(registry)
	// …
}

That should be all you need to start using your new resource type. Test it out by starting an agent in dev mode:

$ make dev
$ consul agent -dev

You can now use grpcurl to interact with the resource service:

$ grpcurl -d @ \
  -plaintext \
  -protoset pkg/consul.protoset \
  127.0.0.1:8502 \
  hashicorp.consul.resource.ResourceService.Write \
<<EOF
  {
    "resource": {
      "id": {
        "type": {
          "group": "foo",
          "group_version": "v1alpha1",
          "kind": "bar"
        },
        "tenancy": {
          "partition": "default",
          "peer_name": "local",
          "namespace": "default"
        }
      },
      "data": {
        "@type": "types.googleapis.com/hashicorp.consul.foo.v1alpha1.Bar",
        "baz": "Hello World"
      }
    }
  }
EOF

Validation

Broadly, there are two kinds of validation you might want to perform against your resources:

Structural validation ensures the user's input is well-formed, for example: checking that a required field is provided, or that a port is within an acceptable range.
Semantic validation ensures that the resource makes sense in the context of other resources, for example: checking that an L7 intention is not targeting an L4 service.

Structural validation should be done up-front, before the resource is admitted, using a validation hook provided in the type registration:

func RegisterTypes(r resource.Registry) {
	r.Register(resource.Registration{
		Type:     pbv1alpha1.BarType,
		Proto:    &pbv1alpha1.Bar{}, 
		Scope:    resource.ScopeNamespace,
		Validate: validateBar,
	})
}

func validateBar(res *pbresource.Resource) error {
	var bar pbv1alpha1.Bar
	if err := res.Data.UnmarshalTo(&bar); err != nil {
		return resource.NewErrDataParse(&bar, err)
	}
	if bar.Baz == "" {
		return resource.ErrInvalidField{
			Name:    "baz",
			Wrapped: resource.ErrMissing,
		}
	}
	return nil
}

Semantic validation should be done asynchronously, after the resource is written, by controllers (covered below).

Authorization

You can control how operations on your resource type are authorized by providing a set of ACL hooks:

func RegisterTypes(r resource.Registry) {
	r.Register(resource.Registration{
		Type:  pbv1alpha1.BarType,
		Proto: &pbv1alpha1.Bar{}, 
		Scope: resource.ScopeNamespace,
		ACLs: &resource.ACLHooks{,
			Read:  authzReadBar,
			Write: authzWriteBar,
			List:  authzListBar,
		},
	})
}

func authzReadBar(authz acl.Authorizer, authzContext *acl.AuthorizerContext, id *pbresource.ID,  _ *pbresource.Resource) error {
	return authz.ToAllowAuthorizer().
		BarReadAllowed(id.Name, authzContext)
}

func authzWriteBar(authz acl.Authorizer, authzContext *acl.AuthorizerContext, res *pbresource.Resource) error {
	return authz.ToAllowAuthorizer().
		BarWriteAllowed(res.ID().Name, authzContext)
}

func authzListBar(authz acl.Authorizer, authzContext *acl.AuthorizerContext) error {
	return authz.ToAllowAuthorizer().
		BarListAllowed(authzContext)
}

If you do not provide ACL hooks, operator:read and operator:write permissions will be required.

Mutation

Sometimes, it's necessary to modify resources before they're persisted. For example, to set sensible default values or normalize user input. You can do this by providing a mutation hook:

func RegisterTypes(r resource.Registry) {
	r.Register(resource.Registration{
		Type:   pbv1alpha1.BarType,
		Proto:  &pbv1alpha1.Bar{}, 
		Scope:  resource.ScopeNamespace,
		Mutate: mutateBar,
	})
}

func mutateBar(res *pbresource.Resource) error {
	var bar pbv1alpha1.Bar
	if err := res.Data.UnmarshalTo(&bar); err != nil {
		return resource.NewErrDataParse(&bar, err)
	}
	bar.Baz = strings.ToLower(bar.Baz)
	return res.Data.MarshalFrom(&bar)
}

Controllers

Controllers are where the business logic of your resources will live. They're asynchronous reconciliation loops that "wake up" whenever a resource is modified to validate and realize the changes.

You can create a new controller using the builder API. Start by identifying the resource type you want this controller to manage, and provide a reconciler that will be called whenever a resource of that type is changed.

package foo

import (
	"context"

	"github.com/hashicorp/consul/internal/controller"
	pbv1alpha1 "github.com/hashicorp/consul/proto-public/pbfoo/v1alpha1"
	"github.com/hashicorp/consul/proto-public/pbresource"
)

func barController() controller.Controller {
	return controller.ForType(pbv1alpha1.BarType).
		WithReconciler(barReconciler{})
}

type barReconciler struct{}

func (barReconciler) Reconcile(ctx context.Context, rt controller.Runtime, req controller.Request) error {
	rsp, err := rt.Client.Read(ctx, &pbresource.ReadRequest{Id: req.ID})
	switch {
	case status.Code(err) == codes.NotFound:
		return nil
	case err != nil:
		return err
	}

	var bar pbv1alpha1.Bar
	if err := rsp.Resource.Data.UnmarshalTo(&bar); err != nil {
		return err
	}
	rt.Logger.Debug("Hello from bar reconciler!", "baz", bar.Baz)

	return nil
}

Next, register your controller with the controller manager. Another common pattern is to have your package expose a method for registering controllers, which is called from registerControllers in server.go.

package foo

func RegisterControllers(mgr *controller.Manager) {
	mgr.Register(barController())
}

package consul

func (s *Server) registerControllers() {
	// …
	foo.RegisterControllers(s.controllerManager)
	// …
}

Retries

By default, if your reconciler returns an error, it will be retried with exponential backoff. While this is correct in most circumstances, you can override it by returning RequeueAfter or RequeueNow.

func (barReconciler) Reconcile(context.Context, controller.Runtime, controller.Request) error {
	if time.Now().Hour() < 9 {
		return controller.RequeueAfter(1 * time.Hour)
	}
	return nil
}

Status

Controllers can communicate the result of reconciling resource changes (e.g. surfacing semantic validation issues) with users and other controllers by updating the resource's status using the WriteStatus method.

Each resource can have multiple statuses, typically one per controller, identified by a string key. Statuses are composed of a set of conditions, which represent discreet observations about the resource in relation to the current state of the system.

That all sounds a little abstract, so let's take a look at an example.

client.WriteStatus(ctx, &pbresource.WriteStatusRequest{
	Id:     res.Id,
	Key:    "consul.io/bar",
	Status: &pbresource.Status{
		ObservedGeneration: res.Generation,
		Conditions: []*pbresource.Condition{
			{
				Type:    "Healthy",
				State:   pbresource.Condition_STATE_TRUE,
				Reason:  "OK",
				Message: "All checks are passing",
			},
			{
				Type:    "ResolvedRefs",
				State:   pbresource.Condition_STATE_FALSE,
				Reason:  "INVALID_REFERENCE",
				Message: "Bar contained an invalid reference to qux",
				Resource: resource.Reference(bar.Qux, ""),
			},
		},
	},
})

In the previous example, the controller makes two observations about the current state of the resource:

That it's "healthy" (whatever that means in this hypothetical scenario)
That it contains a reference that couldn't be resolved

The Type and Reason should be simple, machine-readable, strings, but there aren't any strict rules about what are acceptable values. Over time, we anticipate that common values will emerge that we'll standardize on for consistency.

Message should be a human-readable explanation of the condition.

Warning
Writing a status to the resource will cause it to be re-reconciled. To avoid infinite loops, we recommend dirty checking the status before writing it with resource.EqualStatus.

Watching Other Resources

In addition to watching their "managed" resources, controllers can also watch resources of different, related, types. For example, the service endpoints controller also watches workloads and services.

func barController() controller.Controller {
	return controller.ForType(pbv1alpha1.BarType).
		WithWatch(pbv1alpha1.BazType, controller.MapOwner)
		WithReconciler(barReconciler{})
}

The second argument to WithWatch is a dependency mapper function. Whenever a resource of the watched type is modified, the dependency mapper will be called to determine which of the controller's managed resources need to be reconciled.

controller.MapOwner is a convenience function which causes the watched resource's owner to be reconciled.

Placement

By default, only a single, leader-elected, replica of each controller will run within a cluster. Sometimes it's necessary to override this, for example when you want to run a copy of the controller on each server (e.g. to apply some configuration to the server whenever it changes). You can do this by changing the controller's placement.

func barController() controller.Controller {
	return controller.ForType(pbv1alpha1.BarType).
		WithPlacement(controller.PlacementEachServer)
		WithReconciler(barReconciler{})
}

Warning
Controllers placed with controller.PlacementEachServer generally shouldn't modify resources (as it could lead to race conditions).

Ownership & Cascading Deletion

The resource service implements a lightweight 1:N ownership model where, on creation, you can mark a resource as being "owned" by another resource. When the owner is deleted, the owned resource will be deleted too.

client.Write(ctx, &pbresource.WriteRequest{
	Resource: &pbresource.Resource{,
		Owner: ownerID,
		// …
	},
})

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