Warning

ExtAuthPlugin has been deprecated in favor of ExtAuth Passthrough. Please refer to the Gloo Gateway docs for more information.

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External auth plugin examples

This repository contains example implementations of the ExtAuthPlugin interface and a set of utilities that you can (and should!) use when building your own plugins.

Please refer to the Auth Plugin Developer Guide for an in-depth explanation on how you can use this repository as a template to write your own Gloo Auth plugins.

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NOTE

The following instructions are assuming you are targeting Gloo Enterprise v1.x releases. If you are using a v0.x version of Gloo Enterprise, please refer to this revision of this repository.

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Get example images

You can get the images for the example plugin(s) contained in this repository by running:

docker pull quay.io/solo-io/ext-auth-plugins:<glooe_version>

where the tag glooe_version is the version of Gloo Enterprise you want to run the plugins with, e.g. 1.3.8.

Publishing your own plugins

The images you created can be published to a docker registry that is reachable from the cluster you are running Gloo Enterprise in.

Example workflow

Assuming that you create a plugin called ExamplePlugin.

Setup environment

• Create a copy of this template repo
• Rename the directory required_header to example_plugin in the plugins directory.
• Change the code in plugins/example_plugin/pkg/impl.go with your custom code.
• Change the module name in go.mod

building the plugin

First, store the version of Gloo Enterprise you want to target in an environment variable:

export GLOOE_VERSION=1.3.8
export PLUGIN_NAME=example_plugin
export PLUGIN_BUILD_NAME=ExamplePlugin.so
export PLUGIN_IMAGE=gloo-ext-auth-plugin-${PLUGIN_NAME}-${GLOOE_VERSION}:0.0.1

Containerized (docker) build

Run build to build the plugin in a container.

make build

Local build

Run get-glooe-info to fetch the build information for the targeted Gloo Enterprise version:

make get-glooe-info

Run resolve-deps to check and resolve any dependency mismatches between gloo and your plugin:

make resolve-deps

Run build-plugin to build the plugin. It is important to build the plugins on a linux operating system, because this is compatible with Gloo Enterprise. This step will also verify that they can be loaded.

Note: It is recommended to build in docker to ensure that other plugin/C dependencies for plugin compilation match the same environment Gloo Enterprise was built in (e.g., linker)

make build-plugin

Tag image

In both previous build cases, an anonymous container with the plugin is build for you. The output will look like so:

...
 ---> 4846ae5e0a4d
Step 15/16 : COPY --from=build-env /go/src/github.com/solo-io/ext-auth-plugin-examples/plugins/RequiredHeader.so /compiled-auth-plugins/
 ---> 1932dbdca716
Step 16/16 : CMD cp /compiled-auth-plugins/*.so /auth-plugins/
 ---> Running in c33580aff7e1
Removing intermediate container c33580aff7e1
 ---> c6d2a92c47e4
Successfully built c6d2a92c47e4

Specifically note the Successfully built c6d2a92c47e4 line. In our case c6d2a92c47e4 is the ID of the container just built. To push this container, first re-tag it with your docker registry:

docker tag c6d2a92c47e4 username/dockerrepo:v1

Push image

docker push username/dockerrepo:v1

You can now use this image to load your plugin into the Gloo Enterprise external auth server. See this section of our docs for an example of how to do this.

Configurable options

The following options can be used to create a framework and/or plugin images These options can be set by changing its value in the Makefile, exporting them as a environment variable (export GLOOE_VERSION=1.3.8) or as command argument (GLOOE_VERSION=1.3.8 make <target> )

Option	Default	Description
GLOOE_VERSION	1.3.8	Set this variable to the version of GlooE you want to target
PLUGIN_BUILD_NAME	RequiredHeader.so	Set this variable to the name of your build plugin
PLUGIN_IMAGE	gloo-ext-auth-plugins:$(GLOOE_VERSION)	Set this variable to the image name and tag of your plugin
PLUGIN_NAME	required_header	Set this variable to the name of your plugin
RUN_IMAGE	alpine:3.11	Set this variable to the image name and version used for running the plugin
STORAGE_HOSTNAME	storage.googleapis.com	Set this variable to the hostname of your custom (air gapped) storage server

Common Errors

plugin was built with a different version of package

You might see an error similar to this one in the logs for the build-plugin target:

{"level":"error","ts":"2019-12-17T20:59:17.301Z","logger":"verify-plugins","caller":"scripts/verify_plugins.go:54","msg":"Plugin(s) cannot be loaded by Gloo","error":"failed to load plugin: failed to open plugin file: plugin.Open(\"plugins/RequiredHeader\"): plugin was built with a different version of package github.com/golang/protobuf/proto","errorVerbose":"failed to load plugin:\n    github.com/solo-io/go-utils/errors.Wrapf\n        /go/src/github.com/solo-io/go-utils/errors/utils.go:12\n  - failed to open plugin file:\n    github.com/solo-io/go-utils/errors.Wrapf\n        /go/src/github.com/solo-io/go-utils/errors/utils.go:12\n  - plugin.Open(\"plugins/RequiredHeader\"): plugin was built with a different version of package github.com/golang/protobuf/proto","stacktrace":"main.main\n\t/go/src/github.com/solo-io/solo-projects/projects/extauth/scripts/verify_plugins.go:54\nruntime.main\n\t/usr/local/go/src/runtime/proc.go:200"}

This is caused by a dependency mismatch. Please run the resolve-deps target to update your go.mod file. Note that the mismatch can also be caused by building in a different mode than Gloo Enterprise (go modules vs go path, as the path to the dependency is included in the version mismatch check). The make target should try to determine how to build your plugin for you (go mod vendor -> go path build or just building go modules) using the version of Gloo Enterprise you are targeting.

Makefile overview

Following is an overview of the most relevant make targets.

get-glooe-info

When you are writing your own Ext Auth plugins, you must target a specific Gloo Enterprise version. This is because of the nature of Go plugins (you can find more info in this section of the Auth Plugin Developer Guide). With each release Gloo Enterprise publishes the information that you will require to replicate its build environment.

You can get them by running the following command, where GLOOE_VERSION is the desired Gloo Enterprise version, e.g. 1.3.8.

GLOOE_VERSION=<target-glooe-version> make get-glooe-info

This will download the following files:

• _glooe/build_env: values to parameterize the plugin build with;
• _glooe/dependencies: the full list of the dependencies used by the GLOOE_VERSION version of Gloo Enterprise ( generated by running go list -m all);
• _glooe/verify-plugins-linux-amd64: a script to verify whether your plugin can be loaded by Gloo Enterprise.

resolve-deps

The resolve-deps target compares and merge the dependencies of your plugin module with the dependencies of the Gloo Enterprise one. It will succeed if the shared dependencies match exactly (this is another constraint imposed by Go plugins, more info here) and fail otherwise.

build-plugin

The build-plugin target uses the information published by Gloo Enterprise to mirror its build environment to compile the plugin and verify compatibility.

compile-plugin

The compile-plugin target compiles the plugin for the targeted Gloo Enterprise version.

verify-plugin

The verify-plugin target verifies if the plugin can be loaded by the targeted Gloo Enterprise version.

build

The build-plugin target compiles the plugin inside a docker container using the Dockerfile at the root of this repository (this is done for reproducibility). It uses the information published by Gloo Enterprise to mirror its build environment and verify compatibility. The Dockerfile executes the following targets in the container:

• get-glooe-info to fetch the build information for the targeted Gloo Enterprise version
• resolve-deps to check if gloo and your plugin have different dependencies
• compile-plugin to build the plugin for the targeted Gloo Enterprise version
• verify-plugin to verify if the plugin can be loaded by the targeted Gloo Enterprise version