Building a scalable API with Grails
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The document discusses the creation of a scalable API using Grails for online services in mobile gaming, highlighting design decisions, architecture, and development experiences. It covers aspects such as API design principles, versioning strategies, authentication methods, and performance considerations. The presentation reflects on the challenges faced, including resource limitations and the need for efficient error handling and usage tracking.
![API Design: Response format
Only JSON. No XML
{
meta: {
apiVersion: “1.0.1”,
code: 400,
errorType: “User id required”,
msgs: []
},
response: {
// Content depends on endpoint
},
notifications: { // Future use }
}](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/greachfinal-130127084736-phpapp02/85/Building-a-scalable-API-with-Grails-18-320.jpg)
Building a scalable API with Grails
- 1. Building a scalable API with Grails Greach – 2013-01-26 Tanausú Cerdeña @chozero | @geosophers
- 2. What you can expect from this talk • A story of an API creation on Grails. • Decisions made and the reasons behind. • Pitfalls. • We’re learning as we go.
- 3. About me • Tanausú Cerdeña (@chozero) • Sysadmin background. • Grails user for two years. • Co-founder and CTO at Geosophic.
- 4. Let’s get some context first Online services for mobile games: • Gaming features: Leaderboards, player matching… • Data tracking: levels played, session duration… • Monetization: Performance ad serving.
- 5. Let’s get some context first Online services for mobile games: • Gaming features: Leaderboards, player matching… • Data tracking: levels played, session duration… • Monetization: Performance ad serving.
- 6. Why Grails? 1. Productivity. Geosophic started as an MVP. 2. Java experience on the team. 3. It’s fun to use! (+15% developer happiness).
- 7. Our development environment • Grails 2.1.1 / Groovy 1.8.8 • STS / vim. Trying to move to Intellij (thanks doomsday!!) • Deployed to AWS (Elastic Beanstalk). • Team of 3 developers: • 1 backend, 1 frontend, 1 mobile • Everyone touches everything.
- 8. Overview of architecture Android iOS SDK SDK HTTP API Dashboard (Grails) API Controllers Dashboard Controllers Services Domain Objects MySQL Redis
- 9. API Controllers • Lightweight: • Validate parameters • Call required services • Compose responses
- 10. API Controllers
- 11. API Design Top-down design: • URLs. • (HTTP) Methods (Fully REST compliant?) • Response format. • Versioning. • Authentication.
- 12. API Design: URL schema http://{baseURL}/{version}/{feature}/{item}/{action?} http://api.geosophic.com/v1/leaderboards/leaderboard/nearest http://api.geosophic.com/v1/leaderboards/score http://api.geosophic.com/v1/track/event
- 13. API Design: Versioning options In the URL path? http://my.api.com/v1/endpoint As a URL parameter? http://my.api.com/endpoint??v=1 Custom HTTP Header? Accept-Version: 1 Versioned media types? Accept: application/vnd.myapp-v1+json
- 14. API Design: Versioning options In the URL path? http://my.api.com/v1/endpoint As a URL parameter? http://my.api.com/endpoint??v=1 Custom HTTP Header? Accept-Version: 1 Versioned media types? Accept: application/vnd.myapp-v1+json
- 15. API Design: Versioning issues • Scarcity of resources to handle different versions. • Backwards compatibility? • Our first client deployed, a week later, we decided a change on the API. • Mobile clients (apps) don’t update that often.
- 16. HTTP methods Our API model doesn’t match perfectly with a CRUD model so no fully REST API. • GET: Retrieving info. • Get a leaderboard • POST: Submitting info. • Send a score. • Submit an event.
- 17. API Design: URL mappings
- 18. API Design: Response format Only JSON. No XML { meta: { apiVersion: “1.0.1”, code: 400, errorType: “User id required”, msgs: [] }, response: { // Content depends on endpoint }, notifications: { // Future use } }
- 19. API Design: Response format
- 20. Rendering response render as JSON: • We have a mix of domain classes and other objects to render. • Write custom JSON Marshaller for some classes. • Register them at BootStrap.groovy.
- 23. DRY in our API Controllers We have some common code for all our API endpoints: • Authentication. • API usage tracking. • Common parameters validation.
- 26. @Mixin: ApiController Also includes some helper methods:
- 27. @Mixin: Issues • Class reloading when in development
- 28. API Design: Authentication • (consumer key, consumer secret) per client. • Consumer key used to identify the client (sent as a URL parameter). • Consumer secret to sign the request. • This is (sort of) 2-legged Oauth.
- 29. API Design: Authentication • Some plugins implementing clients, but no suitable (for us) server implementation (maybe we didn’t look deep enough?). • Better to use SpringSecurity and customize? • We are feeling more confident and want to contribute this.
- 30. API Design: Handling errors • 400 handled by each Controller • 500 handled by ErrorController (mapped in UrlMappings.groovy)
- 31. API Design: Handling errors
- 32. Measuring API usage • In ApiController beforeInterceptor • Fire and forget (runAsync in the service) • Now to MySQL, moving to Redis
- 34. Testing • Test Api Controllers as any other controller • All bussiness logic in Services • Remember to include the Mixin:
- 35. Testing
- 36. Performance considerations • No GSPs but JSON so quite fast. • Asynchronous tracking helps. • Difficult to cache (except for leaderboards). We cache in the service.
- 37. Some performance figures • 1 EC2 small instance(1.7GB RAM) • API + Services + Dashboard • 90K users, 7K daily active. • Throughput: ~ 75 rpm (peaks of 200) • Server response time: ~ 160 ms average • Performance tests: up to 450 rpm
- 38. Bottlenecks • Database: MySQL • Redis for most read data: • Gaming features (leaderboards) • Evaluating metrics storage: • Redis • Cube (from Square)
- 39. Next steps • Improve the API usage tracking. • Spock. • See what we can contribute (Auth? API usage?) • Looking for a nice log viewer solution