cloud.Api - static port for api simulator

[RaphaelManke]

Feature Spec

I would like to have a static port when the cloud.Api resource is started in simulator.

Use Cases

This helps in cases where I develop against the api e.g. with a Frontend or want to make api calls with an external api client like insomnia oder postman. On top of that it enables the use of http reverse proxy like ngrok.

I discovered this lack of capability while developing a slack bot. To test it I used ngrok to forward the slack commands to the local machine.

Implementation Notes

No response

Component

SDK, Wing Console

Community Notes

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[Chriscbr]

I think we will need a solution for this and for the cloud.Website resource - cc @tsuf239

brainstorming some ideas...

• Set a port through an environment variable like WING_API_PORT? To avoid confusion we would need to throw if the app has more than one cloud.Api. Also this solution would not play well with the Wing console
• Config file for simulator options... like wing.yml that has a section for simulator options. It would be nice if we can avoid configuration files...
• Can we suggest (or even bundle in) a Wing plugin for this?
• Some kind of in-code workaround -- like:

bring cloud;
bring sim;

let api = new cloud.Api();
(<sim.Api>api).set_port(3000); // casting mechanism -- will fail if you compile to `tf-aws`

[RaphaelManke]

I would add an idea like http://localhost:<staticPort>/<apiIdentifier>

This allows a port be defined by the user e.g. if a default port is not suitable and also support multiple APIs in an wing app.

The apiIdentifier could be something like the node hash.

[eladb]

This is a duplicate with #2227 -- I am not sure a static port is necessarily the correct way to address this use case.

[skorfmann]

This is a duplicate with #2227 -- I am not sure a static port is necessarily the correct way to address this use case.

@eladb I'm not sure that #2227 is really covering this. I think exposing a service to the public internet is quite a different use-case from wanting to have a locally available, static port - even if not necessarily technically, certainly from an organizational policy point of view e.g.: I might have another application I develop running locally (no matter if frontend or backend), where all I want is a known address to a Wing API. In particular in enterprise contexts, I could see this become a dealbreaker if the only option was exposing this via something like ngrok.

[Chriscbr]

I agree I think some more discussion is needed, also this issue does not only pertain to webhooks (webhooks just happen to be one use case). Reopening

[tsuf239]

We need one for the website as well :) my initial thought was to just let the user decide, inside the Api/website constructor made sense for me back then, but I do like @Chriscbr's in-code suggestion, (which we can even change a bit to avoid the user comment and uncomment the line of code to make the file compiles to both sim and aws)

let api = new cloud.Api();
if (utils.target == TARGETS.SIM ) { 
    api.setPort(3000); 
}

[staycoolcall911]

Duplicates #2227

[staycoolcall911]

Oops, missed some important comments on this issue... Reopening - we'll discuss it on a next team time

[Chriscbr]

We've made two changes that should help here:

• The ports used by cloud.Api on the simulator are now reused (https://github.com/winglang/wing/pull/5736)
• An ngrok winglib is now available: https://github.com/winglang/winglibs/tree/main/ngrok

Let us know if these improvements solve your use case(s). I'll downgrade this issue to P2 for now - but if there are use cases or situations that aren't addressed by these changes, I think it could still be feasible to support static ports via an optional custom platform parameter: https://www.winglang.io/docs/concepts/platforms#defining-custom-platform-parameters

[github-actions[bot]]

Hi,

This issue hasn't seen activity in 90 days. Therefore, we are marking this issue as stale for now. It will be closed after 7 days. Feel free to re-open this issue when there's an update or relevant information to be added. Thanks!