Write a Keptn-service

Here you learn how to add additional functionality to your Keptn installation with a custom Keptn-service, SLI-provider, or Action-provider.

• A Keptn-service is responsible for implementing a continuous delivery or operations task.
• An SLI-provider is used to query Service-Level Indicators (SLI) from an external source like a monitoring or testing solution.
• An Action-provider is used to extend a task sequence for remediation with an additional action step.

Template repository

A template for writing a new Keptn-service is provided here: keptn-service-template-go. Please note that the master branch of this repository might represent a development state. Check out the releases page and download the code for a release that’s compatible with the Keptn version for which you are developing.

Since a Keptn-service is a Kubernetes service with a deployment and service template, the deployment manifest in the template repository can be re-used; see deploy/service.yaml.

This deployment manifest contains:

• Kubernetes Deployment, with two containers:
  • keptn-service-template-go: Replace the image of this container with the image of your implementation.
  • distributor: This container integrates with your Keptn and does the event handling. Do not remove it.
• Kubernetes Service

Write your Keptn-service

A Keptn-service has the following characteristics:

• has a subscription to a triggered event that occurs during the execution of a task sequence (e.g., for continuous delivery or operations)
• sends a started event to inform Keptn about receiving the event and acting on it
• processes functionality and can therefore leverage additional tools, e.g., through their REST interface
• sends a finished event to inform Keptn about its execution status and the result

Subscription to a triggered event

Your Keptn-service must have a subscription to at least one Keptn CloudEvent. The event type to subscribe to looks like:

• sh.keptn.event.[task].triggered

In this example, [task] works as a placeholder for tasks such as: deployment, test, evaluation, remediation, etc. The task defines the topic the Keptn-service is interested in. Assuming you are writing a Keptn-service for testing, the event type would be: sh.keptn.event.test.triggered.

Distributor:

• To subscribe your Keptn-service to the sh.keptn.event.[task].triggered event, a distributor with PUBSUB_TOPIC set to the specific event type is required, see example below. Alternatively, a default distributor listening to all events (e.g., PUBSUB_TOPIC: sh.keptn.>) is provided in the deployment manifest of the keptn-service-template-go template (see deploy/service.yaml).

The PUBSUB_TOPIC variable sets the initial subscription for your service. If a subscription has been modified through the Bridge, Keptn prioritizes this information and it discards the value of PUBSUB_TOPIC. Please, look at the Bridge paragraph later on this page for more information on the subject.

spec:
  containers:
  - name: distributor
    image: keptn/distributor:0.18.0
    ports:
    - containerPort: 8080
    resources:
      requests:
        memory: "16Mi"
        cpu: "25m"
      limits:
        memory: "128Mi"
        cpu: "250m"
    env:
      - name: PUBSUB_URL
        value: 'nats://keptn-nats-cluster'
      - name: PUBSUB_TOPIC
        value: 'sh.keptn.event.test.triggered'
      - name: PUBSUB_RECIPIENT
        value: '127.0.0.1'

In addition to forwarding received events for the subscribed topic to the Keptn-service, the distributor also provides the feature to act as a proxy to the Keptn API. Using this feature, the following Keptn API services are reachable for the Keptn-service via the following URLs, if the distributor runs within the same K8s pod as the Keptn-service:

• Mongodb-datastore:

  • http://localhost:8081/mongodb-datastore

• Configuration-service:

  • http://localhost:8081/configuration-service

• Shipyard-controller:

  • http://localhost:8081/controlPlane

To configure this distributor for your Keptn-service, the following environment variables can be adapted. However, in most scenarios only a subset of them needs to be configured. The full list of environment variables is as follows:

The above list of environment variables is pretty long, but in most scenarios only a few of them have to be set. The following examples show how to set the environment variables properly, depending on where the distributor and it’s accompanying execution plane service should run:

If your Keptn-service is running in the same pod as the distributor (which we recommend), and receives events at the port 8080 and the path /, you will only need to set the PUBSUB_TOPIC environment variable.

If your Keptn-service is running in the same pod as the distributor (which we recommend), and receives events at the port 8080 and the path /, you will only need to set the PUBSUB_TOPIC environment variable.

Bridge:

After the application is deployed, its subscription can be changed directly in the Bridge. For this, open Keptn Bridge, select a project, and go to the Uniform page. Then select your service, and click the Add subscription button.

In this form, you can provide the information for the task subscription:

• Task: The task on which the integration should be fired (e.g., test or deployment)
• Task suffix: The state of the task when the integration should be fired; select one of: triggered, started, of finished
• Filter: To restrict your integration to certain stages and services you can specify those using filters.

Note: multiple subscriptions can be added for the same service.

Keptn stores this subscriptions information even if the integration is not running. By default, Keptn keeps this information for 48h after the last contact with the integration. This time value can be configured using the Helm value shipyardController.config.uniformIntegrationTTL.

Send a started event

After receiving a triggered event for a particular task, your Keptn-service must inform Keptn by sending an event of the type:

• sh.keptn.event.[task].started

The request body needs to follow the CloudEvent specification and the HTTP header attribute Content-Type has to be set to application/cloudevents+json.

Send the event:

The event can be sent to Keptn in either of the following ways:

1. Post it on the v1/event endpoint of Keptn
2. If the distributor is running as sidecar, post the event on 127.0.0.1:8081

Execute the functionality

The functionality of your Keptn-service depends on the capability you want to add to the continuous delivery or operational workflow. In many cases, the event payload – containing meta-data such as the project, stage, or service name – is first processed and then used to call the REST API of another tool.

Send a finished event

After your Keptn-service has completed its functionality, it has to inform Keptn by sending an event of the type:

• sh.keptn.event.[task].finished

The request body must follow the CloudEvent specification and the HTTP header attribute Content-Type must be set to application/cloudevents+json.

Add property to event header:

Add to the header of the event:

• triggeredid: The value of this property is the id of the sh.keptn.event.[task].triggered event.

Add data to event payload:

You can send data back to Keptn by adding it to the data block in the event payload. In more details, the data block has a reserved space depending on the event type. If, for example, your Keptn service has a subscription to a sh.keptn.event.test.finished event, the reserved space is data.test. Your Keptn-service is allowed to add data there, but must provide at least a value for status and result:

• status: [succeeded, errored, unknown] - The status of the task execution.
• result: [pass, failed] - The result of a successful task execution.

{
  "type": "sh.keptn.event.test.finished",
  "specversion": "1.0",
  "source": "https://github.com/keptn/keptn/jmeter-service",
  "id": "ggb878d3-03c0-4e8f-bc3f-454bc1b3d888",
  "time": "2019-06-07T07:02:15.64489Z",
  "contenttype": "application/json",
  "shkeptncontext": "08735340-6f9e-4b32-97ff-3b6c292bc509",
  "triggeredid" : "f2b878d3-03c0-4e8f-bc3f-454bc1b3d79d",
  "data": {
    "test": {
      "status": "succeeded",
      "result": "pass"
    },
    "project": "sockshop",
    "stage": "staging",
    "service": "carts",
    "labels": {
      "testId": "4711",
      "buildId": "build-17",
      "owner": "JohnDoe"
    }
  }
}

Send the event:

The event can be sent to Keptn, in either of the following ways:

1. Post it on the v1/event endpoint of Keptn
2. If the distributor is running as sidecar, post the event on 127.0.0.1:8081

Deploy Keptn-service with distributor

Subscribe service to Keptn event

Distributor: To subscribe your service to a Keptn event, a distributor is required. A distributor is part of the above mentioned deployment manifest and shown by the example below:

spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      run: distributor
  replicas: 1
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        run: distributor
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: distributor
        image: keptn/distributor:0.18.0
        ports:
        - containerPort: 8080
        resources:
          requests:
            memory: "16Mi"
            cpu: "25m"
          limits:
            memory: "128Mi"
            cpu: "250m"
        env:
        - name: PUBSUB_URL
          value: 'nats://keptn-nats-cluster'
        - name: PUBSUB_TOPIC
          value: 'sh.keptn.event.deployment.finished'
        - name: PUBSUB_RECIPIENT
          value: '127.0.0.1'
        - name: VERSION
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              apiVersion: v1
              fieldPath: 'metadata.labels[''app.kubernetes.io/version'']'
        - name: K8S_DEPLOYMENT_NAME
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              apiVersion: v1
              fieldPath: 'metadata.labels[''app.kubernetes.io/name'']'
        - name: K8S_POD_NAME
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              apiVersion: v1
              fieldPath: metadata.name
        - name: K8S_NAMESPACE
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              apiVersion: v1
              fieldPath: metadata.namespace
        - name: K8S_NODE_NAME
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              apiVersion: v1
              fieldPath: spec.nodeName

To configure this distributor for your Keptn-service, two environment variables need to be adapted:

• PUBSUB_RECIPIENT: Defines the service address as specified in the Kubernetes service manifest (e.g., 127.0.0.1 or jmeter-service)
• PUBSUB_TOPIC: Defines the event type your Keptn-service is listening to (e.g. sh.keptn.event.test.triggered or sh.keptn.event.>).

Deploy Keptn-service and distributor

With a service and deployment manifest for your custom Keptn-service (service.yaml), you are ready to deploy both components in the K8s cluster where Keptn is installed:

kubectl apply -f service.yaml -n keptn

CloudEvents

CloudEvents must be sent with the HTTP header Content-Type set to application/cloudevents+json. For a detailed look into CloudEvents, please go the Keptn CloudEvent specification.

Error Logging

By default, the distributor automatically extracts error logs from received sh.keptn.<task>.finished events with data.status=errored and/or data.result=fail, that have been sent by your service. These error messages are then forwarded to Keptn’s Log Ingestion API.

Additionally, for easier debugging of errors that occur either during the execution of a task of a sequence, or while performing any other operation, Keptn integration services can send error log events to the Keptn API via the distributor. Examples for those events are listed below.

Logging an error related task sequence execution:

If the error log event is associated with the execution of a specific task that has been triggered by a sh.keptn.event.<task>.triggered event, the following properties must be set in order to correlate them to the correct task sequence execution:

• shkeptncontext: The context of the task sequence execution. Can be adapted from the received sh.keptn.event.<task>.triggered event
• triggeredid: The id of the received sh.keptn.event.<task>.triggered event
• data.task: The name of the executed task.
• data.message: The message you would like to log

Example event payload

{
  "specversion": "1.0",
  "id": "c4d3a334-6cb9-4e8c-a372-7e0b45942f53",
  "source": "source-service",
  "type": "sh.keptn.log.error",
  "datacontenttype": "application/json",
  "data": {
    "message": "an unexpected error occurred during the execution of my task",
    "task": "deployment"
  },
  "triggeredid": "3f9640b6-1d2a-4f11-95f5-23259f1d82d6",
  "shkeptncontext": "a3e5f16d-8888-4720-82c7-6995062905c1",
  "shkeptnspecversion": "0.2.3"
}

Logging an error that is not related to the execution of a task

If the error log event is not associated with an execution of a specific task, the properties shkeptncontext, triggeredid, and data.task are not required. In this case, an example payload would look as follows:

{
  "specversion": "1.0",
  "id": "c4d3a334-6cb9-4e8c-a372-7e0b45942f53",
  "source": "source-service",
  "type": "sh.keptn.log.error",
  "datacontenttype": "application/json",
  "shkeptnspecversion": "0.2.3",
  "data": {
    "message": "an unexpected error occurred during the execution of my task",
    "task": "deployment"
  }
}

See also

• Distributor
• distributor