Oasis.MicroService

Introduction

Oasis.MicroService is a simple and supportive library that allows developers to deploy asp.net core web APIs as plugins in web API projects. Or, to be more straight forward, it helps developers to distribute web controller classes in class library projects instead of centralizing them the web API project. So one web API project may contain one or more such microservices, each has it's own folder, configuration files, and run time context. With the support of this library, software engineers will be able to easily deploy microservices dynamically in different web API hosts.

An example use case: I've built a micro-service asp.net core web API named service1, then have it running in a web host. Later I want to build another micro-service asp.net core web API named service2, which I also want to deploy to the same web host. But the 2 web services may not work very well in the same host, like they may both consume a lot of CPU power or memory, so if that happens, I may want to shift one of the micro-services to a different host. In the mean-time if the 2 micros-ervices are ok to be on the same host, I may want to deploy more microservices to the same host.

Of course a natual way to implement this would be to implement all such micro-services as separate web API projects, and run multiple web APIs with different ports on the same host. The concern about this approach is we may end up using 10 or 20 different ports on the same host, which is simply too many to remember or manage. Hence Oasis.MicroService library would help to publish the micro-services as class libraries projects instead of web API projects, and allowing the contents of the micro-services to be easily deployed under the same web API project like plug-ins.

Usage & APIs

Micro Service Implementation

To implement a micro-service, the following steps should be carried out:

Create a class library project, add reference to Oasis.MicroService. Define all controllers of the micro-service in this project, add the web APIs inside the controllers. Define all necessary interfaces and implementations for features.
Define the context builder classes for the micro-service, which should inherit from abstract class MicroServiceContextBuilder. There are several points to know for implementing the abstract class:

Note that each micro-service assembly should only contain 1 non-abstract class implementing MicroServiceContextBuilder
The class has an abstract method named Initialize, all dependency injections should be done with its first input parameter of type IServiceCollection (All controllers defined in the micro-service assembly will be resolved using the service provider built from this IServiceController interface, but don't inject the controllers manually, it's taken care of automatically).
The second parameter of Initialize is the configuration root read from the micro-service's path with default logic implemented in protected virtual method GetConfiguration. The method by default tries to find the the configuration file has the same name appsettings.json, under the same path where the assembly is deployed. Environment specific configuration of MicroServiceContextBuilder works the same way as normal asp.net core applications, meaning config file appsettings.Development.json under the same folder will be taken when ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT = Development, so long and so forth for other environments. This environment variable for micro-services are overridable by configuration at web host side (refer to impleneting web host section). Note that such configuration files are considered optional by Oasis.MicroService, which is the same as normal asp.net core web api. If configuration file is compulsory for certain micro-services, some defensive coding can be done in the Initialize method. Method GetConfiguration is virtual for the possibility of customizing the configuration file reading behavior.

protected override void Initialize(IServiceCollection serviceCollection, IConfigurationRoot configuration)
{
	serviceCollection.AddSingleton<ISimpleDemoServiceDemoService>(new SimpleDemoServiceDemoService());
	var simpleDemoServiceConfiguration = configuration.Get<SimpleDemoServiceConfiguration>();
	if (simpleDemoServiceConfiguration == null)
	{
		throw new FileLoadException($"Configuration for {typeof(SimpleDemoServiceConfiguration)} missing", Path.GetFileName(this.GetType().Assembly.Location));
	}

	serviceCollection.AddSingleton<ISimpleDemoServiceConfiguration>(simpleDemoServiceConfiguration);
}

Web Host Implementation

To implement the web API host, the following steps should be followed:

Create a web API project, add reference to Oasis.MicroService.
In configuration file, define a "MicroServices" section to list assemblies with environment names for all micro services to be plugged in. This section contains a list of included micro-service assemblies, a list of assemblies to be excluded, and a flag to decide whether to ignore micro-service assembly loading errors.

Included section contains a list of items each configures some micro-service assembly. Each configuration item includes 3 properties: Directory contains directory to search for the micro-service, Pattern is the search pattern to find micro-service assemblies by name, while Environment contains the environment name for environment specific configuration (Environment parameter is optional, and overrides the value of ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT set for web api host if specified). Oasis.MicroService will try to match all assemblies in the specified directory and recursively in all its sub-directories.
Note that wildcard characters * and ? are allowed for SearchPattern property (not for Directory property), so multiple micro-service assemblies can be included with one such configuration item. This will be convenient if users don't want to add/remove one entry everytime a micro-service is deployed/deleted. All micro-service assemblies will be configured with the same Environment value if specified in that entry.
Sometimes some assemblies may be wrongfully included by the wildcard character matching mechanism of Included section, like the dependency library Oasis.CommonLibraryForDemoService.dll in the micro service directories will be included by search pattern "DemoService.dll", hence Excluded property is introduced to contain a list of items each configures some assemblies that are not supposed to be included. For the example given of "DemoService.dll" wrongfully including Oasis.CommonLibraryForDemoService.dll, just list Oasis.CommonLibraryForDemoService.dll to be exluded solves the problem. Wildcard character matching for Excluded section works the same as Included section. This section will only excluded assemblies included by wildcard characters (e.g. in the sample configuration below, "Oasis.DemoServiceWithSqlite.dll" is included without wildcard characters, so it will not be excluded even if it is listed in Excluded section).
Note that root folder for included and excluded assemblies are always the directory of the assembly that calls AddMicroServices method (which is most likely the web API assembly).
The flag IgnoreAssemblyLoadingErrors decides whether to ignore exceptions when loading micro-service assemblies (e.g. the assembly file is not found, the assembly file is not in the correct format, the assembly file doesn't have a valid implementation of MicroServiceContextBuilder, and so on). If it is set to true, then Oasis.MicroService will simply swallow the exceptions and skip micro-service assemblies that throw them when being loaded (So Excluded section is not necessary anymore). This might be useful if users have too many dependency assemblies that are included by wildcard character matching, and don't want to list them all in Excluded section. But it is recommended to always adjust the wildcard matching and leave this flag to be false (which is the default if not configured) to avoid finding out certain expected micro-services are missing only at web API run-time. Note that this flag only works on micro-service assemblies that are included with wildcard characters, for any item that has no wildcard character in SearchPattern property (e.g. "Oasis.DemoServiceWithSqlite.dll" in the sample below), exceptions happend when loading the micro-service assembly will be thrown regardless of value of this flag.

{
	"MicroServices":{
		"Included": [
			{ "Directory": "MicroServices", "SearchPattern": "*DemoService.dll" },
			{ "Directory": "MicroServices", "SearchPattern": "Oasis.DemoServiceWithSqlite.dll", "Environment": "Test" }
		],
		"Excluded": [
			{ "Directory": "MicroServices", "SearchPattern": "Oasis.CommonLibraryForDemoService.dll" }
		],
    	"IgnoreAssemblyLoadingErrors": false
	}
}

In Program.cs file, read the "MicroServices" section from configuration file, use AddMicroServices API to register all micro services. Then run the web API service, controllers defined in the micro-services should be available.

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

// Add microservices to the container.
var microServiceConfiguration = new List<MicroServiceConfiguration>();
builder.Configuration.GetSection("MicroServices").Bind(microServiceConfiguration);
builder.AddMicroServices(microServiceConfiguration);

Considerations