Integrating Microcks from Jenkins

Microcks Jenkins plugin

Microcks provides a Jenkins plugin that you may find in its own GitHub repository. This plugin allows your Jenkins builds and jobs to import API specifications into Microcks and to launch tests runner for validating the Service or API you just deployed. See this page on Tests for more informations on running tests with Microcks.

Using this plugin, it is really easy to keep Microcks in-sync withe your API specifications and integrate tests stages within your Continuous Integration / Deployment / Delivery pipeline. Microcks Jenkins plugin delegates tests realization and assertions checking to Microcks, wait for the end of tests or a configured timeout and just pursue or fail the current job depending on tests results.

Getting raw plugin

While not being distributed yet as an official Jenkins plugin, Microcks Jenkins plugin is available and can be downloaded from Central Maven repository. Just get the HPI file and install it on your Jenkins master your preferred way.

Building an OpenShift Jenkins master embedding plugin

A common option for running Jenkins is through OpenShift platform. In that case, you may want to create your own custom Jenkins master container image embedding this plugin. While there’s many ways of building such images, as Microcks plugin is not yet an official Jenkins plugin, we provide our own OpenShift configuration for that.

Given you have an OpenShift installation running and you’re logged on it, just execute that command from terminal:

$ oc process -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microcks/microcks-jenkins-plugin/master/openshift-jenkins-master-bc.yml | oc create -f -

This should start a Build and then create an ImageStream called microcks-jenkins-master in your current project. After few minutes, a microcks-jenkins-master:latest container image should be available and you may be able to reference it as a bootstrap when creating a new Jenkins Service on OpenShift.

If you already have a Jenkins deployment you want to update, just issue the two following commands:

$ oc set triggers dc/jenkins --remove --from-image=openshift/jenkins:2
$ oc set triggers dc/jenkins --from-image=microcks-jenkins-master:latest -c jenkins

Setting up Microcks Jenkins plugin

This plugin is using identified Service Account when connecting to Microcks server. It is also able to manage multiple Microcks installation and hide the technical details from your Jobs using Microcks plugins. As a Jenkins administrator, go to the Manage Jenkins page and find the Microcks section. You should be able to add and configure as many instance of Microcks installation as you want like in the 2 configured in screenshot below:

A Microcks installation configuration need 5 parameters:

• A Name will be used by your Jobs or Pipelines as a reference of an environment,
• The API URL is the endpoint of your Microcks server receiving API calls,
• The Credentials to use for authenticating the Service Account and allowing it to retrieve an OAuth token (more on that on Service Account). These are Credentials that should be registered into Jenkins,
• The Disable Cert Validation box you have to check if you have a HTTPS setup with auto-signed certificates.

You should then be able to test the connection to endpoints and save your configuration. Later, your Jobs and Pipelines will just use the installation Name to refer it from their build steps.

Using Microcks Jenkins plugin

Jenkins plugin may be used in 2 ways:

• As a simple Build Step using a form to define what service to test,
• As an action defined using Domain Specific Language within a Pipeline stage

It provides two different actions or build steps: the Import API specification files in Microcks step and the Launch Microcks Test Runner step.

Import API Specification

Build step usage

When defining a new project into Jenkins GUI, you may want to add a new Import API specification files in Microcks step as shown in the capture below.

The parameters that can be set here are:

• The Server: this is your running installation of Microcks that is registered into Jenkins (see previous setup step),
• The Comma separated list of API specification to import: this is simply a /my/file/path[:is_primary],/my/file/path2[:is_primary] expression. You should point to local files in your job workspace (typically those coming from a checkout or clone from source repository) and optionally specify if they should be considered as main or primary artifact (true value) or secondary artifact (false value).

DSL plugin usage

When defining a new CI/CD pipeline - even through the Jenkins or OpenShift GUI or through a Jenkinsfile within your source repository - you may want to add a specific microcksImport within your pipeline script as the example below:

node('master') {
  stage ('build') {
    // Clone sources from repo.
    git 'https://github.com/microcks/microcks-cli'
  }
  stage ('importAPISpecs') {
    // Add Microcks import here.
    microcksImport(server: 'microcks-localhost',
      specificationFiles: 'samples/weather-forecast-openapi.yml:true,samples/weather-forecast-postman.json:false')
  }
  stage ('promoteToProd') {
    // ...
  }
  stage ('deployToProd') {
    // ...
  }
}

The parameters that can be set here are the same that in Build Step usage but take care to cases and typos:

• The server: this is your running installation of Microcks that is registered into Jenkins (see previous setup step),
• The specificationFiles: this is simply a /my/file/path[:is_primary],/my/file/path2[:is_primary] expression.

Launch Test

Build step usage

When defining a new project into Jenkins GUI, you may want to add a new Launch Microcks Test Runner step as shown in the capture below.

The parameters that can be set here are:

• The Server: this is your running installation of Microcks that is registered into Jenkins (see previous setup step),
• The Service Identifier to launch tests for: this is simply a service_name:service_version expression,
• The Test Endpoint to test: this is a valid endpoint where your service or API implementation has been deployed,
• The Runner Type to use: this is the test strategy you may want to have regarding endpoint,
• The Verbose flag: allows to collect detailed logs on Microcks plugin execution,
• The Timeout configuration: allows you to override default timeout for this tests.

DSL plugin usage

When defining a new CI/CD pipeline - even through the Jenkins or OpenShift GUI or through a Jenkinsfile within your source repository - you may want to add a specific microcksTest within your pipeline script as the example below:

node('maven') {
  stage ('build') {
    // ...
  }
  stage ('deployInDev') {
    // ...
  }
  stage ('testInDev') {
    // Add Microcks test here.
    microcksTest(server: 'microcks-minishift',
      serviceId: 'Beer Catalog API:0.9',
      testEndpoint: 'http://beer-catalog-impl-beer-catalog-dev.52.174.149.59.nip.io/api/',
      runnerType: 'POSTMAN', verbose: 'true')
  }
  stage ('promoteToProd') {
    // ...
  }
  stage ('deployToProd') {
    // ...
  }
}

The parameters that can be set here are the same that in Build Step usage but take care to cases and typos:

• The server: this is your running installation of Microcks that is registered into Jenkins (see previous setup step),
• The serviceId to launch tests for: this is simply a service_name:service_version expression,
• The testEndpoint to test: this is a valid endpoint where your service or API implementation has been deployed,
• The runnerType to use: this is the test strategy you may want to have regarding endpoint,
• The verbose flag: allows to collect detailed logs on Microcks plugin execution,
• The waitTime configuration: allows you to override the default time quantity for this tests.
• The waitUnit configuration: allows you to override the default time unit for this tests (values in milli, sec or min).

Using Microcks and its Jenkins plugin, you may achieve some clean CI/CD pipelines that ensures your developed API implementation is fully aligned to expectations. See below a visualization of such a pipeline for our Beer Catalog API (full project to come soon).