Calling External Services

We saw in Calling Automation Using the RESTful API how external systems can make incoming calls to CloudForms or ManageIQ using the RESTful API, and run Automate instances, perhaps to initiate workflows that we’ve defined.

From Automate we can also make outgoing calls to external systems. We typically use SOAP or RESTful APIs to access theses external services, and there are several Ruby Gems that make this easy for us, including Savon (SOAP client), RestClient, XmlSimple and Nokogiri (XML parsers), and Fog (a Ruby Cloud Services Library).

We have already seen an example of making a RESTful API connection to the RHEV Manager in Customising VM Provisioning. Now we will look at some more ways that we can integrate with external services.^[1]

Calling a SOAP API Using the Savon Gem

The following snippet shows an example of making a SOAP call to an f5 BIG-IP load balancer to add an IP address to a pool (some lines have been omitted for brevity/clarity):

  def call_F5_Pool(soap_action, body_hash=nil)
    servername = nil || $evm.object['servername']
    username   = nil || $evm.object['username']
    password   = nil || $evm.object.decrypt('password')

    require "rubygems"
    gem 'savon', '=2.3.3'
    require "savon"
    require 'httpi'

    # configure httpi gem to reduce verbose logging
    HTTPI.log_level = :info # changing the log level
    HTTPI.log       = false # diable HTTPI logging
    HTTPI.adapter   = :net_http # [:httpclient, :curb, :net_http]

    soap = Savon.client do |s|
      s.wsdl "https://#{servername}/iControl/iControlPortal.cgi? \
                                                    WSDL=LocalLB.Pool"
      s.basic_auth [username, password]
      s.ssl_verify_mode :none
      s.endpoint "https://#{servername}/iControl/iControlPortal.cgi"
      s.namespace 'urn:iControl:LocalLB/Pool'
      s.env_namespace :soapenv
      s.namespace_identifier :pool
      s.raise_errors false
      s.convert_request_keys_to :none
      s.log_level :error
      s.log false
    end

    response = soap.call soap_action do |s|
      s.message body_hash unless body_hash.nil?
    end

    # Convert xml response to a hash
    return response.to_hash["#{soap_action}_response".to_sym][:return]
  end
  ...
  vm.ipaddresses.each do |vm_ipaddress|
    body_hash = {}
    body_hash[:pool_names] = {:item => [f5_pool]}
    body_hash[:members] = [{:items =>
                            { :member =>
                               {:address => vm_ipaddress,
                                :port => f5_port}
                             }
                           }]
    # call f5 and return a hash of pool names
    f5_return = call_F5_Pool(:add_member, body_hash)
  end

This script defines a method call_F5_Pool that handles the connection to the load balancer. The method first retrieves the connecting credentials from the instance schema, and then specifies a particular version of the Savon Gem to use, and sets the required HTTP logging levels. It initialises the Savon client with the required parameters (including a WSDL path), and then makes the SOAP call. The method finally returns with the SOAP XML return string formatted as a Ruby hash.

The method is called in a loop, passing an IP address into the body_hash argument on each iteration.

Calling an OpenStack API Using the Fog Gem

The fog gem is a multipurpose cloud services library that supports connectivity to a number of cloud providers.

The following code uses the fog-openstack gem to retrieve OpenStack networks from Neutron, and present them as a dynamic drop-down dialog list. The code filters networks that match a tenant’s name, and assumes that the CloudForms/ManageIQ user’s group has a tenant tag containing the same name:

require 'fog/openstack'
begin
  tenant = $evm.root['user'].current_group.tags(:tenant).first
  $evm.log(:info, "Tenant name: #{tenant}")

  dialog_field = $evm.object
  dialog_field["sort_by"] = "value"
  dialog_field["data_type"] = "string"
  openstack_networks = {}
  openstack_networks[nil] = '< Select >'
  ems = $evm.vmdb('ems').find_by_name("OpenStack DC01")
  raise "ems not found" if ems.nil?

  neutron_service =  Fog::Network::OpenStack.new({
    :openstack_api_key  => ems.authentication_password,
    :openstack_username => ems.authentication_userid,
    :openstack_auth_url => "https://#{ems.hostname}:#{ems.port}/v2.0/tokens",
    :openstack_tenant   => tenant,
    :connection_options => {:ssl_verify_peer => false}
  })

  keystone_service = Fog::Identity::OpenStack.new({
    :openstack_api_key  => ems.authentication_password,
    :openstack_username => ems.authentication_userid,
    :openstack_auth_url => "https://#{ems.hostname}:#{ems.port}/v2.0/tokens",
    :openstack_tenant   => tenant,
    :connection_options => {:ssl_verify_peer => false}
  })

  tenant_id = keystone_service.current_tenant["id"]
  $evm.log(:info, "Tenant ID: #{tenant_id}")
  networks = neutron_service.networks.all
  networks.each do |network|
    $evm.log(:info, "Found network #{network.inspect}")
    if network.tenant_id == tenant_id
      network_id = $evm.vmdb('CloudNetwork').find_by_ems_ref(network.id)
      openstack_networks[network_id] = network.name
    end
  end

  dialog_field["values"] = openstack_networks
  exit MIQ_OK

rescue => err
  $evm.log(:error, "[#{err}]\n#{err.backtrace.join("\n")}")
  exit MIQ_STOP
end

This example first retrieves the value of a tenant tag applied to the current user’s access control group. It then makes a fog connection to both Neutron and Keystone, using the Fog::Network.new and Fog::Identity.new calls, specifying a :provider type of 'OpenStack', the credentials defined for the ManageIQ OpenStack provider, and the tenant name retrieved from the tag.

The script iterates though all of the Neutron networks, matching those with a tenant_id that matches our tenant tag. If a matching network is found it retrieves the 'CloudNetwork' service model object ID for the network and uses that as the key for the hash that populates the dynamic drop-down list. The corresponding hash value is the network name retrieved from Neutron.

Reading from a MySQL Database Using the MySQL Gem

We can add gems to our ManageIQ appliance if we wish. The following code snippet uses the mysql gem to connect to a MySQL-based CMDB to extract project codes and create tags from them:

require 'rubygems'
require 'mysql'

begin
  server   = $evm.object['server']
  username = $evm.object['username']
  password = $evm.object.decrypt('password')
  database = $evm.object['database']

  con = Mysql.new(server, username, password, database)

  unless $evm.execute('category_exists?', "project_code")
    $evm.execute('category_create', :name => "project_code",
                                    :single_value => true,
                                    :description => "Project Code")
  end
  con.query('SET NAMES utf8')
  query_results = con.query('SELECT description,code FROM projectcodes')
  query_results.each do |record|
    tag_name = record[1]
    tag_display_name = record[0].force_encoding(Encoding::UTF_8)

    unless $evm.execute('tag_exists?', 'project_code', tag_name)
      $evm.execute('tag_create', "project_code", :name => tag_name,
                                                :description => tag_display_name)
    end
  end
end
rescue Mysql::Error => e
  puts e.errno
  puts e.error
ensure
  con.close if con
end

This example first makes a connection to the MySQL database, using credentials stores in the instance schema. It then checks that the tag category exists, before specifying 'SET NAMES utf8' ^[2], and making a SQL query to the database to retrieve a list of project codes and descriptions. Finally the script iterates through list of project codes returned, creating a tag for each corresponding code.

Summary

These examples show the flexibility that we have to integrate with other enterprise components. We have called a load balancer API as part of a provisioning operation to add new IP addresses to its pool. This enables us to completely automate the auto-scaling of our application workload. We have called two OpenStack components to populate a dynamic drop-down list in a service dialog, and we have made a SQL call to a MySQL database to extract a list of project codes and create tags from them.

Calling External Services