IBM API Connect Loopback Node.js application as Business Facing Microservice

This project is part of the 'IBM Cloud Native Reference Architecture' suite, available at https://github.com/ibm-cloud-architecture/refarch-cloudnative

This project sits between the API gateway and the backend socialreview microservices. It is built with IBM API Connect Loopback framework as well as integrated API definition (OpenAPI) with following functionality:

• Implement the SocialReview API managed by IBM API connect
• Invoke the backend microservices component
• Expose the Loopback REST API as consumer facing APIs following OpenAPI standard
• Augment the JSON data payload for Mobile and Web client

The Loopback application is managed under the socialreview folder.
The API definition is defined under the socialreview/definition folder.

The application uses Loopback REST Connector to integrate with backend Microservices. You can find more information about the connector at: https://docs.strongloop.com/display/APIC/REST+connector

Run the application locally:

To run the application or edit the API definition, we recommend to install IBM API connect developer toolkit (cli) at https://console.ng.bluemix.net/docs/cli/index.html#cli.

• Configure the application

  This bff application consumes the REST services provided by the backend socialreview Microservices. For example the Bluemix container group route: http://socialreviewservice.mybluemix.net/ You need to provide this information to the Loopback datasource configuration.
  Edit the file socialreview\server\datasource.json
  Replace the 'baseURL' and operation 'url' with your microservice endpoint, for example:

  "template": {
    "method": "GET",
    "url": "http://socialreviewservice.mybluemix.net/micro/review",
    "options": {
      "strictSSL": false,
      "useQuerystring": true
    }
  

• Run the application:

  $ cd socialreview
$ npm install

  The application can run as either a standalone Node.js application or as part of the IBM API connect managed runtime (which includes API micro gateway for testing the API. This is the recommended approach):

  • Run as IBM API Connect component

  $ apic start

  You should see message like:
  Service socialreview started on port 4001 Service socialreview-gw started on port 4002

  You can Validate the application at: http://localhost:4001/api/reviews/list

  • Run as a standard Node.js app

  $ npm start

  You can Validate the application at: http://localhost:3000/api/reviews/list

Deploy to Bluemix runtime as API Connect Loopback application:

Create Auto-Scaling service in your Bluemix space.

$ cf create-service Auto-Scaling free cloudnative-autoscale

IBM API Connect developer toolkit provides integrated command line utility to deploy the Loopback application to Bluemix (as Cloud Foundry application) as well as publishing the APIs. To do this, you need to have your Bluemix API Connect service configured properly, if not, please reference the setup README at the root repository https://github.com/ibm-cloud-architecture/refarch-cloudnative

Assuming deploying to API connect environment at: us.apiconnect.ibmcloud.com/orgs/centusibmcom-cloudnative-dev
Use the following command to deploy the Loopback application

$ apic login --server us.apiconnect.ibmcloud.com
$ apic config:set app=apic-app://us.apiconnect.ibmcloud.com/orgs/centusibmcom-cloudnative-dev/apps/socialreview-bff-app
$ apic apps:publish

Bind Auto-Scaling service to the published app.

$ cf bs socialreview-bff-app cloudnative-autoscale
$ cf restage socialreview-bff-app

This will deploy the Socialreview BFF application to Bluemix runtime.