Consume external services in a custom plugin

Start by importing two new libraries to the handler.lua file to enable HTTP and JSON parsing support.

We’ll use the lua-resty-http library for HTTP client connectivity to the third-party service.

For JSON support, we’ll use the lua-cjson library.

Add the libraries to the top of handler.lua:

local http  = require("resty.http")
local cjson = require("cjson.safe")

The lua-resty-http library provides a simple HTTP request function (request_uri) that we can use to reach out to our third-party service. In this example, we’ll send a GET request to the httpbin.org/anything API.

Add the following to the top of the MyPluginHandler:response function inside the handler.lua module:

local httpc = http.new()

local res, err = httpc:request_uri("http://httpbin.konghq.com/anything", {
  method = "GET",
})

If the request to the third-party service is successful, the res variable will contain the response.

The Kong Gateway Plugin Development Kit provides you with various functions to help you handle error conditions.

In this example, we’re processing responses from the upstream service and decorating the client response with values from the third-party service. If the request to the third-party service fails, we can terminate the response processing and return to the client with an error, or continue processing the response and not complete the custom header logic.

In this example, we’ll terminate the response processing and return a 500 internal server error to the client.

Add the following to the MyPluginHandler:response function, immediately after the httpc:request_uri call:

if err then
  return kong.response.error(500,
    "Error when trying to access third-party service: " .. err,
    { ["Content-Type"] = "text/html" })
end

After this step, the handler.lua file looks like this:

local http  = require("resty.http")
local cjson = require("cjson.safe")

local MyPluginHandler = {
    PRIORITY = 1000,
    VERSION = "0.0.1",
}

function MyPluginHandler:response(conf)

    local httpc = http.new()

    local res, err = httpc:request_uri("http://httpbin.konghq.com/anything", {
    method = "GET",
    })

    if err then
        return kong.response.error(500,
          "Error when trying to access third-party service: " .. err,
          { ["Content-Type"] = "text/html" })
      end
    
    kong.response.set_header(conf.response_header_name, "response")
end

This third-party service returns a JSON object in the response body. We’ll parse and extract a single value from the JSON body.

1. In your handler.lua file, use the decode function in the lua-cjson library passing in the res.body value received from the request_uri function. Add this to your file right below what you added in the previous step:

   local body_table, err = cjson.decode(res.body)
   

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   The decode function returns a tuple of values. The first value contains the result of a successful decoding and represents the JSON as a table containing the parsed data. If an error occurs, the second value will contain error information (or nil on success).

2. Add the following to the MyPluginHandler:response function after the previous line to stop processing in case of an error:

   if err then
     return kong.response.error(500,
       "Error while decoding third-party service response: " .. err,
       { ["Content-Type"] = "text/html" })
   end
   

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3. Update the following line after the error handling to set the value of the url field in the response as the header value instead of response:

   kong.response.set_header(conf.response_header_name, body_table.url)
   

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After this step, the handler.lua file looks like this:

local http  = require("resty.http")
local cjson = require("cjson.safe")

local MyPluginHandler = {
  PRIORITY = 1000,
  VERSION = "0.0.1",
}

function MyPluginHandler:response(conf)

  kong.log("response handler")

  local httpc = http.new()

  local res, err = httpc:request_uri("http://httpbin.konghq.com/anything", {
    method = "GET",
  })

  if err then
    return kong.response.error(500,
      "Error when trying to access third-party service: " .. err,
      { ["Content-Type"] = "text/html" })
  end

  local body_table, err = cjson.decode(res.body)

  if err then
    return kong.response.error(500,
      "Error when decoding third-party service response: " .. err,
      { ["Content-Type"] = "text/html" })
  end

  kong.response.set_header(conf.response_header_name, body_table.url)

end

return MyPluginHandler

At this stage, using the pongo run command to execute the integration tests will result in errors. The value of the header has changed from response to http://httpbin.konghq.com/anything.

1. Update the expected header value in spec/my-plugin/01-integration_spec.lua:

   -- validate the value of that header
   assert.equal("http://httpbin.konghq.com/anything", header_value)
   

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2. Run the tests:

   pongo run
   

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   Pongo should report a successful test run.

Note: This series provides examples to get you started. In a real plugin development scenario, you would want to build integration tests for third-party services by providing a test dependency using a mock service instead of making network calls to the actual third-party service used. Pongo supports test dependencies for this purpose. See the Pongo documentation for details on setting test dependencies.