firx

A small piece of code to show what an Application Gateway is after a question raised in the "Barcelona Software Craftmanship" Meetup on 2015-Nov-30.

The example consists of two ring-based servers. The first one webapp just waits for HTTP requests in the form http://host:port/uppercase/word to return a JSON map with word in uppercase form. The application, however, does nothing to block any request or to optimize performance. Any well-formed request will be processed.

The second one, appgw, is the Application Gateway (layer 7 firwall, WAF, etc). It is there to exemplify some of the features these systems tend to offer. Among others, we show:

• request filtering: it prevents words defined as problematic to be processed. These ones are load at start up time by the server.
• performance optimization: it caches results.

The Application Gateway, therefore, is able to perform many functions that cross cut several architectural layers in a tightly integrated way with the business logic provided by other elements sitting behind it.

Open multiple sessions to start the different servers. Logging is sent to the console.

• Start the app server lein with-profile webapp ring server-headless 3000
• Start the app gw FORWARD_PORT=3000 lein with-profile +appgw ring server-headless 4000
• Raise a request on a allowed word curl -q -L -o - http://localhost:4000/uppercase/guitar
  • The result is not cached {"status":"ok","cached":false,"text":"GUITAR"}
• Raise it again
  • The result is cached {"status":"ok","cached":true,"text":"GUITAR"}
• Raise a request on a non-allowed word curl -q -L -o - http://localhost:4000/uppercase/disco
  • Error is returned {"status":"err","reason":"forbidden word"}

• Many things, this is just an example
• For the sake of curiosity, measure capacity and see the impact of involving asynchronous frameworks.

Firx is a small, semi-hostile alien attached to the liver of Cugel the Clever, the main character in the Eyes of Overworld, a novel written by Jack Vance. My favourite sci-fi author.

Copyright © 2015 Cristobal Garcia

Distributed under the Eclipse Public License either version 1.0 or (at your option) any later version.