Create
The first step in creating our new provider is to generate a new project from a template. We provide an example template to generate a capability provider that has scaffolding to implement the wasmcloud:messaging interface. This page will walk you through generating this capability provider and then implementing the functionality using NATS.
To create this capability provider you'll need to install wash and the Rust toolchain. After implementing, you'll also want the nats CLI to send your provider messages.
The messaging interface
This capability provider will provide the functionality for the wasmcloud:messaging interface. Interfaces are defined in WebAssembly Interface Type (WIT)—if you're new to WIT, see the Interfaces section for an introduction to WIT, worlds, interfaces, imports and exports, and how all of these concepts tie together.
Let's take a look at the WIT for this interface:
package wasmcloud:messaging@0.2.0;
// Types common to message broker interactions
interface types {
// A message sent to or received from a broker
record broker-message {
subject: string,
body: list<u8>,
reply-to: option<string>,
}
}
interface handler {
use types.{broker-message};
// Callback handled to invoke a function when a message is received from a subscription
handle-message: func(msg: broker-message) -> result<_, string>;
}
interface consumer {
use types.{broker-message};
// Perform a request operation on a subject
request: func(subject: string, body: list<u8>, timeout-ms: u32) -> result<broker-message, string>;
// Publish a message to a subject without awaiting a response
publish: func(msg: broker-message) -> result<_, string>;
}
This interface defines two interfaces, handler and consumer, in order to give a component the ability to send and receive messages. In a nutshell, this is a pubsub messaging capability.
Generate
First, generate the capability provider project:
wash new provider messaging-nats --template-name messaging-nats
Feel free to take a look around the provider project. The important files are:
src/nats.rs: We're going to be primarily implementing functionality here.wasmcloud.toml: Build information and metadata for the providerwit/provider.wit: The interface this provider implements and uses
Implementing the interface
This capability provider uses wasmcloud:messaging and imports the handler interface and exports the consumer interface. Take a look at the wit under wit/provider.wit for this provider:
package wasmcloud:provider-messaging-nats;
world provider-messaging-nats {
import wasmcloud:messaging/handler@0.2.0;
export wasmcloud:messaging/consumer@0.2.0;
}
For each import in the provider's world, you'll use an external trigger in order to invoke that function on a WebAssembly component dynamically at runtime. Here we import the handler interface, and we're going to invoke a linked component any time we receive a message on a NATS subscription.
For each export in the provider's world, you'll need to implement a function to handle the functionality of that interface. WebAssembly components will be able to invoke exported functions dynamically at runtime. Here, we export the entire consumer interface, so we'll need to implement the publish and request functionality in the provider.
Implementing imports
As mentioned above, an import is a function that a provider will invoke on a WebAssembly component. We can start with the wasmcloud:messaging/handler.handle-message import and, by the end of this section, we'll be invoking a component in response to a NATS message.
We're going to implement the dispatch_msg function about halfway down in src/nats.rs. In place of the TODO, we'll use the generated interface function for wasmcloud::messaging::handler::handle_message, with the wRPC client, to invoke a component:
async fn dispatch_msg(component_id: &str, nats_msg: async_nats::Message) {
let msg = BrokerMessage {
body: nats_msg.payload.into(),
reply_to: nats_msg.reply.map(|s| s.to_string()),
subject: nats_msg.subject.to_string(),
};
debug!(
subject = msg.subject,
reply_to = ?msg.reply_to,
component_id = component_id,
"sending message to component",
);
// TODO: Send the message to the component's `wasmcloud:messaging/handler.handle-message` function //[!code --]
todo!("Use wasmcloud:messaging/handler for NATS provider")
if let Err(e) = wasmcloud::messaging::handler::handle_message(
&get_connection().get_wrpc_client(component_id),
&msg,
)
.await
{
error!(
error = %e,
"Unable to send message"
);
}
}
Each import in your provider's WIT interface will generate a function like this for you to call at runtime. The get_connection function is provided as a part of the wasmcloud-provider-sdk crate, and is a helper function to retrieve the RPC client for component communication.
Implementing exports
An export is a function that your provider will implement that components will call at runtime. At the bottom of src/nats.rs, you'll see we have an empty implementation for both export functions in the WIT, publish and request. The Handler trait is generated directly from the WIT interface, so an implementer of the Handler trait must implement both of these functions. For this step, we can use the async-nats crate to implement publish and request functionality.
/// Components will call this function to publish a message to a subject
async fn publish(
&self,
ctx: Option<Context>,
msg: BrokerMessage,
) -> anyhow::Result<Result<(), String>> {
// Retrieve the NATS client for the component
let nats_client =
if let Some(ref source_id) = ctx.and_then(|Context { component, .. }| component) {
let components = self.components.read().await;
let nats_bundle = match components.get(source_id) {
Some(nats_bundle) => nats_bundle,
None => {
error!("component not linked: {source_id}");
bail!("component not linked: {source_id}")
}
};
nats_bundle.client.clone()
} else {
error!("component did not make request");
bail!("component did not make request")
};
// Publish the message
let res = nats_client
.publish(msg.subject.to_string(), msg.body.into())
.await
.map_err(|e| e.to_string());
// (Optional) Flush the NATS client to ensure the message is sent
let _ = nats_client.flush().await;
Ok(res)
}
After retrieving the NATS client that is configured for the requesting component, we can simply publish the message to the provided subject and return the result. An optional recommended step is included to flush the NATS client after publishing, which ensures that the message is sent immediately and improves performance.
We created the NATS client for the requesting component inside of the receive_link_config_as_target function provided by the provider SDK. At runtime, when a component links to this capability provider, it will provide configuration for connecting to a NATS server. Check the implementation of that function to see how we use that configuration to create and store a client for lookups later.
Next we can do a similar step for implementing request:
/// Components will call this function to publish a message to a subject and expect
/// a response back
async fn request(
&self,
ctx: Option<Context>,
subject: String,
body: Vec<u8>,
_timeout_ms: u32,
) -> anyhow::Result<Result<BrokerMessage, String>> {
// Retrieve the NATS client for the component
let nats_client =
if let Some(ref source_id) = ctx.and_then(|Context { component, .. }| component) {
let components = self.components.read().await;
let nats_bundle = match components.get(source_id) {
Some(nats_bundle) => nats_bundle,
None => {
error!("component not linked: {source_id}");
bail!("component not linked: {source_id}")
}
};
nats_bundle.client.clone()
} else {
error!("component did not make request");
bail!("component did not make rrequest")
};
// Publish the message
let res = nats_client
.request(subject.to_string(), body.into())
.await
.map(|msg| BrokerMessage {
body: msg.payload.to_vec(),
reply_to: msg.reply.map(|s| s.to_string()),
subject: msg.subject.to_string(),
})
.map_err(|e| e.to_string());
// (Optional) Flush the NATS client to ensure the message is sent
let _ = nats_client.flush().await;
Ok(res)
}
We perform the same steps to fetch the NATS client, and instead of publishing a message we make a request and map the response into the type the component is expecting, a BrokerMessage. Note here that we did not use the timeout_ms argument, and there's some duplicated logic here for retrieving a NATS client. If you're looking to improve this code, try refactoring it to remove duplication and implement the timeout for the request.
Testing the provider
Now that you've implemented all of the import and export functions for this provider, it's ready to test. Inside of the project directory you can run wash build to compile and package your provider into a provider archive. For more information on building, check out the build page. We'll use a prebuilt wasmCloud example component that uses wasmcloud:messaging to test this provider.
To generate the example component, use the following command. You can do this inside of your current project directory or as a separate folder:
wash new component --git wasmcloud/wasmcloud --subfolder examples/rust/components/echo-messaging echo
This component is fairly simple, it exports the same function that the provider imports, wasmcloud:messaging/handler.handle-message, and it imports the same function the provider exports, wasmcloud:messaging/consumer.publish. We'll use a declarative manifest to link this component and our provider together at runtime.
impl Guest for Echo {
fn handle_message(msg: types::BrokerMessage) -> Result<(), String> {
if let Some(reply_to) = msg.reply_to {
consumer::publish(&types::BrokerMessage {
subject: reply_to,
reply_to: None,
body: msg.body,
})
} else {
log(
Level::Warn,
"",
"No reply_to field in message, ignoring message",
);
Ok(())
}
}
}
Edit the application manifest, wadm.yaml, to point to your built provider archive. The below example assumes that you generated the component in a subfolder of your capability provider directory. You can also use absolute paths to remove any ambiguity:
apiVersion: core.oam.dev/v1beta1
kind: Application
metadata:
name: rust-echo-messaging
annotations:
version: v0.0.1
description: "Echo demo in Rust, using the WebAssembly Component Model and WebAssembly Interfaces Types (WIT)"
spec:
components:
- name: echo
type: component
properties:
image: file://./build/echo_messaging_s.wasm
traits:
# Govern the spread/scheduling of the component
- type: spreadscaler
properties:
replicas: 1
- type: link
properties:
target: nats
namespace: wasmcloud
package: messaging
interfaces: [consumer]
target_config:
- name: simple-subscription
properties:
subscriptions: wasmcloud.echo
# Add a capability provider that implements `wasmcloud:messaging` using NATS
- name: nats
type: capability
properties:
image: ghcr.io/wasmcloud/messaging-nats:canary
image: file://../build/wasmcloud-example-messaging-nats.par.gz
Next, start up a wasmCloud host if you don't have one already:
wash up -d
And finally, deploy your application:
cd echo
wash app deploy wadm.yaml
In a few moments, the example component and your provider will be deployed. You can verify this worked by checking the inventory of the host:
> wash get inventory
Host Inventory (NC77TD43XRWDLTEA2DV4JHJCNT65QNOQEUKTSDJKIB4KSSIDM7FQ5EM6)
zone us-west-1
hostcore.osfamily unix
hostcore.os macos
hostcore.arch aarch64
Component ID Name Image Reference
rust_echo_messaging-echo echo-messaging file:///tmp/messaging-nats/echo/build/echo_messaging_s.wasm
Provider ID Name Image Reference
rust_echo_messaging-nats Messaging NATS file:///tmp/messaging-nats/build/wasmcloud-example-messaging-nats.par.gz
Using the NATS CLI, try sending your component a message! You should get back whatever you sent as a payload in the request.
➜ nats req "wasmcloud.echo" "helloooo"
15:37:50 Sending request on "wasmcloud.echo"
15:37:50 Received with rtt 2.025916ms
helloooo
Conclusion
This guide walks through the process of building a capability provider using a standard interface, wasmcloud:messaging. You can use this guide and this example as an outline for how you would implement wasmcloud:messaging for a different pubsub system, like Kafka, or you could use it as a reference for implementing a different standard interface like wasi:keyvalue, wasi:http, etc. The process is exactly the same for custom interfaces, simply update your WIT interface file with the functions that satisfy your interface, and then use the wasmcloud-provider-sdk library to generate types and functions for you to implement.