HTTP Services

Apcera provides the HTTP service type and gateway for creating direct internet connections from job instances to IP addresses outside the cluster using the HTTP protocol.

Configuring HTTP services

You use the http service type to connect jobs to external networks using the HTTP protocol. Jobs using the http service gateway can communicate externally using HTTP only.

The http service type uses a semantic pipeline that understands the HTTP protocol. As a result, the IP address of a job bound to an HTTP service is not exposed to the outside world. This can be important to security administrators.

Consuming HTTP services

Apcera provisions the http service for you. You do not have to register any provider or create the service.

The FQN for the HTTP service is service::/apcera::http.

To consume the HTTP service you simply bind a job directly to the built-in HTTP service using the following syntax:

apc service bind /apcera::http --job <job-name>

For example:

apc service bind /apcera::http -job my-capsule

With this configuration, your my-capsule job will be able to connect to the internet over HTTP.

Using the HTTP semantic pipeline

Apcera provides a semantic pipeline for the HTTP service gateway. The semantic pipeline understands the HTTP protocol and acts as a proxy between the job and the service. The semantic pipeline manages the HTTP connection. You can write rules against the semantic pipeline to inject logic into the connection.

Note that service::/apcera::http and service::/apcera::outside-http are not the same service types. While both provide network egress to jobs, the http type is restricted to the HTTP protocol and has an associated semantic pipeline. The outside-http service is a [network service type] that does not restrict the protocol to HTTP. However, there is no semantic pipeline associated with this service.

The HTTP semantic pipeline does not support ephemeral credentials.