loadbalancer Interface Protocol API Library

This library provides an API for requesting and providing load balancers or ingress endpoints from one charm to another. It can be used in either charms written in the newer Operator Framework or older charms still using the charms.reactive Framework.

Installation / Setup

Include this library as a dependency for your charm, either in requirements.txt for Operator Framework charms, or wheelhouse.txt for reactive charms:

loadbalancer_interface

Usage

Requesting Load Balancers

Requesting a load balancer from a provider is done via the LBProvider class. The general pattern for using the class is:

• Wait for the provider to become available
• Get a Request object via the get_request(name) method
• Set the appropriate fields on the request object
• Send the Request via the send_request(request) method
• Wait for the Response to be provided (or updated)
• Get the Response object via either the get_response(name) method or via the new_responses property
• Confirm that the request was successful and use the provided LB's address
• Acknowledge the Response via ack_response(response)

There are examples in the repo for how to do this in an operator charm or in a reactive charm.

Providing Load Balancers

Providing a load balancer to consumers is done via the LBConsumers class. The general pattern for using the class is:

• Wait for new or updated requests to come in
• Iterate over each request object in the new_requests property
• Create a load balancer according to the request's fields
• Set the appropriate fields on the request's response object
• Send the request's response via the send_response(request) method

There are examples in the repo for how to do this in an operator charm or in a reactive charm.

API Reference

See the API docs for detailed reference on the API.

Test Charms

To ease testing of charms using this interface, this library provides test charms which can be used with the pytest-operator plugin based integration test to serve as a basic counterpart to the charm providing or requiring this interface.

The charms are accessed via an lb_charms fixture, which is session scoped. The fixture provides an object with attributes for each of the example charms available in the repo. (The attribute names will be the charm names with dashes replaced with underscores.) For example:

async def test_build_and_deploy(ops_test, lb_charms):
    my_charm = await ops_test.build_charm(".")
    lb_provider = await ops_test.build_charm(lb_charms.lb_provider)
    await ops_test.model.deploy(my_charm)
    await ops_test.model.deploy(lb_provider)
    await ops_test.model.add_relation("my-charm", "lb-provider")