Services are collections of lambda functions exposed to the outside world as HTTP endpoints. They are nothing fancy - it's just backend code running somewhere.
That awesome monolithic app you are working on at your company? Its backend can be a service on 1Backend, or there can be many - if you prefer to break it down microservices-style.
Service are namespaced by their authors - the user who creates them - just like GitHub repos are.
Every service's every endpoint (function) is a HTTP endpoint. HTTP is used for both client -> service and service -> service communication.
internet 1Backend network
/------------------------------\ /-------------------------------------------------\
client request client request
to service A to service A
( ) -----------------> |----------------| -----------------> |-----------|
( client ) | 1Backend proxy | | service A |
( ) <----------------- |----------------| <----------------- |-----------|
service A response service A response
to client to client
Services do not call each other directly. Each request goes through the same 1Backend proxy. This is because the proxy is a perfect place to implement a lot of things we would otherwise have to do in clients. That would mean reimplementing things in a lot of languages, and also - you can't really trust clients.
1Backend network
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
service A request service A request
to service B to service B
|-----------| -----------------> |----------------| -----------------> |-----------|
| service A | | 1Backend proxy | | service B |
|-----------| <----------------- |----------------| <----------------- |-----------|
service B response service B response
to service A to service A
^
|
|---- place of instrumentation and other magic
You can call service endpoints with any HTTP tool (e.g. cURL), and 1Backend also generates type-safe clients in different languages if you specify the types of your service and endpoints.
To read more about the generated type-safe clients, go here.
If you prefer to do things the hard/low-level way, here is how you can make a curl request to a fictional service called "service" of the user called "user". The endpoint we are going to call is called "endpoint":
curl 'https://1backend.com:9993/app/user/service/endpoint' -H 'token: 320b5933-e8f6-4daf-ad16-fb36ede68233'(What is that token thingie? Read more here)
Currently, both the input and the output are expected to be JSON on 1Backend. This is not enforced in any way, but the generated clients expect it. So we advise you to make your services follow this schema:
To pass in inputs to services that expect them, just do what you usually do with JSON-speaking services:
- Send form parameters to
GETandDELETErequests (i.e. no JSON here). - Send a marshalled JSON body to
POSTandPUTrequests.
Outputs are uniformly just marshalled JSON in the response body. (Support for XML and other formats might come later.)
Private services are unlisted; only you can see them. Public services have three levels of openness:
- Closed source services only publish their types and API, so others can consume them.
- Open source services publish their source code.
- Open data services publish their source and their data.
By default, every service is open source, but not open data.