Tutorial

This page will go through a step by step tutorial on how to create a simple plugin. The plugin we will create in this tutorial will be simple and provide readings for a single device. For examples of more complex plugins, see the examples directory in the source repo, or see the Emulator Plugin.

The plugin we will build will provide a single “memory” device which will give readings for total memory, free memory, and the used percent. To get this memory info we will use https://github.com/shirou/gopsutil.

0. Figure out desired behavior

Before we dive in and start writing code, its always a good idea to lay out what we want that code to do. In this case, we’ll outline what we want the plugin to do, and what data we want it to provide. Since this is a simple, somewhat contrived plugin, these are all pretty basic.

Goals

  • Provide readings for memory usage
  • Do not support writing (doesn’t make sense in this case)
  • Have the readings be updated every 5 seconds

Devices

  • One kind of device will be supported: a “memory usage” device. It will provide readings for:
    • Total Memory (in bytes)
    • Free Memory (in bytes)
    • Used Percent (percent)

With this outline of what we want in mind, we can start framing up the plugin.

1. Create the plugin skeleton

If you have read the documentation on plugin configuration, you will know that there are three types of configurations that a plugin uses: plugin config, device instance config, and device prototype config. What each does is explained in the configuration documentation. We will need to include those with our plugin, as well as a file to define the plugin.

▼ tutorial-plugin
    ▼ config
        ▼ device
            mem.yml
        ▼ proto
            mem.yml
    config.yml
    plugin.go

First, we will focus on writing the configuration for the plugin and the supported devices. Note that the plugin configuration does not need to be written first. For this tutorial we are writing if first, though, to help build an understanding of how devices are defined and how the plugin will ultimately use them.

2. Write the plugin configurations

As mentioned in the previous section, plugins have three types of configuration: - Plugin configuration - Device instance configuration - Device prototype configuration

First, we’ll start with the plugin configuration.

Plugin Configuration

The plugin configuration defines how the plugin itself will operate. Since this is a simple, somewhat contrived plugin with only a single readable device, the configuration will not be too complicated. See the plugin configuration documentation for more info on how to configure plugins.

First, we will want to name the plugin. Since its job is to provide memory info, we’ll call it memory.

We’ll also want to decide how we want to communicate with the plugin – via TCP, or via Unix Socket. Either is fine, but for the tutorial, we’ll use unix socket. Typically, when naming the unix socket for a plugin, we follow the pattern <PLUGIN_NAME>.sock, so here it will be memory.sock.

Finally, as per the Goals we laid out in section 0, we want the readings to be updated every 5 seconds. That means we will need to set the read interval to 5s. All together, this would look like:

config.yml
version: 1.0
name: memory
debug: false
network:
  type: unix
  address: memory.sock
settings:
  read:
    interval: 5s

In the above, version refers to the version of the configuration file scheme, not the version of the plugin itself. We’ve also set debug: false to disable debug logging. If you wish to see debug logs, just set this to true.

Device Prototype Configuration

Next, we want to define the prototype configuration for the memory device. The prototype configuration is basically device configuration that doesn’t change between device instances. This is largely device meta-information. The example here will be simple because our plugin/device is simple. See the documentation on device prototype configuration for more detailed information.

The prototype configuration really consists of two types of information: device metainfo, and device output info. The metainfo helps to identify the device. The output info acts as a template for the readings the device provides and how those readings should be formatted.

In this simple case, we can say that our device is a “memory” type device. We need to specify the model as well as the type, since those two bits of info are used to match prototype configs to their instance configs. We will also define some device manufacturer and the device protocol, for completeness.

For this example, there isn’t really a manufacturer (its just the amount of memory we have available), so we can feel free to put whatever we want. Similarly, there isn’t a well-defined protocol that we are using to communicate with the device (e.g. HTTP, IPMI, RS-485, etc), so we can also specify whatever we find useful there.

Finally, we’ll need to define the device outputs. As described in section 0, we want to be able to read the total memory, free memory, and percent used. We can call these types “total”, “free”, and “percent_used”, respectively.

config/proto/mem.yml
version: 1.0
prototypes:
  - type: memory
    model: tutorial-mem
    manufacturer: virtual
    protocol: os
    output:
      - type: total
        data_type: int
        unit:
          name: bytes
          symbol: B
      - type: free
        data_type: int
        unit:
          name: bytes
          symbol: B
      - type: percent_used
        data_type: float
        unit:
          name: percent
          symbol: "%"

In the above config, the version is the version of the configuration scheme. Note that we also specified a unit for each reading output. The unit is not required, but since we expect to get bytes and a percentage for the readings, we can explicitly call that out here.

Device Instance Configuration

Having a prototype instance is not enough; we need an instance to fulfill that prototype. This is where the device instance configurations come in. These configs will be joined up with the existing prototype configs by matching the device type and the device model (e.g. type: memory and model: tutorial-mem).

Another component to the instance configurations is defining the device location. If you are familiar with Synse Server, you will know that we currently reference devices via a rack/board/device hierarchy, e.g. read/rack-1/board-1/device-1. These are effectively just labels to namespace devices, so they can be whatever you want them to be. For this tutorial, we’ll say that the rack is local and the board is host. This should result in the Synse Server URI read/local/host/<device-id>.

Note

Synse Server 2.0 uses the <rack>/<board>/<device> notation for identifying all devices. This notation is largely historical from the initial design of Synse Server, which did not aim to be as generalized as it is now. In future versions (e.g. 3.0), early planning and discussion has the strict rack-board-device requirements phased out in favor of more generalized labeling. This should not be any concern now, but something to look for in the future.

The final piece to our configuration is specifying the config for the memory device instance. Here we will only want one device (we’re only getting memory from one place, so we only need a single device to do it). As we will see in the next section, we will need a way to reliably identify this device. For protocols like HTTP, RS-485, and others, we can do this by using the addressing configuration as part of the ID composite (if device X can only be reached via unique address A, then address A can help to identify device X). Since we do not need any protocol-specific configurations for our memory device, we will just add in an id field that will provide a reliable unique identifier for that device (since we only have one device, it may seem weird, but if we were to have two memory devices, we’d need a way to differentiate).

config/device/mem.yml
version: 1.0
locations:
  localhost:
    rack: local
    board: host
devices:
  - type: memory
    model: tutorial-mem
    instances:
      - id: "1"
        location: localhost
        info: Virtual Memory Usage

In the above config, the version is the version of the configuration scheme.

Now, we should have all three configurations completed and ready.

▼ tutorial-plugin
    ▼ config
        ▼ device
            mem.yml ✓
        ▼ proto
            mem.yml ✓
    config.yml ✓
    plugin.go

All that is left is to start writing the plugin itself.

3. Write handlers for the device(s)

If you’ve read through some of the documentation on plugin basics, you should know that in order to handle the configured devices, handlers for those devices need to be defined.

There are a few kinds of handlers:

  • device handler: the read/write handler specific to a single device
  • device identifier: the handler that determines how to generate unique ids for all devices managed by the plugin
  • device enumerator: the handler for generating Device instances programmatically, e.g. not from device instance configuration files.

For our simple plugin, we will not need a device enumerator (we’ve already created the configuration for the device instance anyways). All plugins require one device handler per configured device type (e.g. per prototype). Additionally, all plugins require a device identifier because without it, we would not be able to reliably create deterministic unique ids for all devices.

Device Identifier Handler

We’ll start with the device identifier handler, since its the easiest. In the previous section when we defined the instance config, we made note that we need an id field to help uniquely identify the device. Our device identifier will simply extract that field from the config for us.

func GetIdentifiers(data map[string]string) string {
    return data["id"]
}

The data map coming in is a map that is populated with the instance data from the instance configuration YAML, e.g. in this case

id: "1"
location: localhost
info: Virtual Memory Usage

We get the ID out and return. This gets used in the Plugin SDK as part of a composite of locational info, prototype metainfo, and this instance info to generate the unique (and reproducible) device id hash.

Device Handler

Next we’ll define the read-write handler for our device. We won’t do any writing for the device, so its more of a read handler in this case. To read the memory info, we can use https://github.com/shirou/gopsutil which can be gotten via

$ go get github.com/shirou/gopsutil/mem

We can use that package to define our read functionality for the memory device. Note that because this tutorial is simple, we are putting everything in one file, but this is not required and is discouraged for plugins that do anything beyond serve as an example. See the SDK repo’s examples directory or the emulator plugin for examples of how to structure plugins.

func Read(device *sdk.Device) ([]*sdk.Reading, error) {
    v, err := mem.VirtualMemory()
    if err != nil {
        return nil, err
    }

    return []*sdk.Reading{
        sdk.NewReading("total", fmt.Sprintf("%v", v.Total)),
        sdk.NewReading("free", fmt.Sprintf("%v", v.Free)),
        sdk.NewReading("percent_used", fmt.Sprintf("%v", v.UsedPercent)),
    }, nil
}

And finally, we’ll need to associate this read function with the device handler itself

var memoryHandler = sdk.DeviceHandler{
    Type: "memory",
    Model: "tutorial-mem",
    Read: Read,
    Write: nil,
}

Now we have our configuration defined and our handlers defined. Next, we put together the plugin, configure it, and register the handlers.

4. Create and configure the plugin

The creation, configuration, registration, and running of a plugin can all be done within the main() function. In short, the things that need to happen are:

  • create the Handlers
  • create the Plugin
  • register all handlers
  • run the plugin

If that sounds simple – that’s because it should be!

func main() {

    // The device identifier and device enumerator handlers.
    handlers, err := sdk.NewHandlers(GetIdentifiers, nil)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }

    // Create the plugin and register the handlers. The second
    // parameter here is nil -- this signifies that no override
    // configuration is being used and to just get the configs
    // from file.
    plugin, err := sdk.NewPlugin(handlers, nil)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }

    // Register the device handlers with the plugin.
    plugin.RegisterDeviceHandlers(
        &memoryHandler,
    )

    // Run the plugin.
    err = plugin.Run()
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
}

There is a lot more that can be done when setting up the plugin, such as specifying a device enumerator, specifying pre-run actions, and specifying device setup actions. Since this example plugin is simple, there is no need for that, but those capabilities are described in the advanced usage documentation.

5. Plugin Summary

To summarize, we should now have a file structure that looks like:

▼ tutorial-plugin
    ▼ config
        ▼ device
            mem.yml
        ▼ proto
            mem.yml
    config.yml
    plugin.go

With the configuration files:

config.yml
version: 1.0
name: memory
debug: false
network:
  type: unix
  address: memory.sock
settings:
  read:
    interval: 5s
config/proto/mem.yml
version: 1.0
prototypes:
  - type: memory
    model: tutorial-mem
    manufacturer: virtual
    protocol: os
    output:
      - type: total
        data_type: int
        unit:
          name: bytes
          symbol: B
      - type: free
        data_type: int
        unit:
          name: bytes
          symbol: B
      - type: percent_used
        data_type: float
        unit:
          name: percent
          symbol: "%"
config/device/mem.yml
version: 1.0
locations:
  localhost:
    rack: local
    board: host
devices:
  - type: memory
    model: tutorial-mem
    instances:
      - id: "1"
        location: localhost
        info: Virtual Memory Usage

And the plugin source code:

plugin.go
package main

import (
    "log"
    "fmt"

    "github.com/shirou/gopsutil/mem"

    "github.com/vapor-ware/synse-sdk/sdk"
)

func GetIdentifiers(data map[string]string) string {
    return data["id"]
}

func Read(device *sdk.Device) ([]*sdk.Reading, error) {
    v, err := mem.VirtualMemory()
    if err != nil {
        return nil, err
    }
    return []*sdk.Reading{
        sdk.NewReading("total", fmt.Sprintf("%v", v.Total)),
        sdk.NewReading("free", fmt.Sprintf("%v", v.Free)),
        sdk.NewReading("percent_used", fmt.Sprintf("%v", v.UsedPercent)),
    }, nil
}

var memoryHandler = sdk.DeviceHandler{
    Type: "memory",
    Model: "tutorial-mem",
    Read: Read,
    Write: nil,
}

func main() {

    // The device identifier and device enumerator handlers.
    handlers, err := sdk.NewHandlers(GetIdentifiers, nil)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }

    // Create the plugin and register the handlers. The second
    // parameter here is nil -- this signifies that no override
    // configuration is being used and to just get the configs
    // from file.
    plugin, err := sdk.NewPlugin(handlers, nil)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }

    // Register the device handlers with the plugin.
    plugin.RegisterDeviceHandlers(
        &memoryHandler,
    )

    // Run the plugin.
    err = plugin.Run()
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
}

6. Build and run the plugin

Next we will build and run the plugin locally, without Synse Server in front of it. In order to interface with the plugin, we’ll use the Synse CLI.

From within the tutorial-plugin directory,

$ go build -o plugin

Congratulations, the plugin is now built! Now we can run it

$ ./plugin

Doing this and looking through the output logs, you’ll see that no devices are registered and some errors were logged around finding device configurations. This is because the SDK looks in the default /etc/synse/plugin directory for configs, but our configs are local.

We can set an environment variable to tell it the correct place to look.

$ PLUGIN_DEVICE_CONFIG=config ./plugin

Now you should see a single registered tutorial-mem device and no errors. To interact with the plugin, we can use the CLI

Getting the plugin meta-info

$ synse plugin -u /tmp/synse/procs/memory.sock meta
ID                                 TYPE      MODEL          PROTOCOL   RACK      BOARD
65f660ac428556804060c13349e500de   memory    tutorial-mem   os         local     host

Getting a reading from the device

$ synse plugin -u /tmp/synse/procs/memory.sock read local host 65f660ac428556804060c13349e500de
TYPE           VALUE               TIMESTAMP
total          8589934592          Thu Apr 19 11:19:36 EDT 2018
free           324714496           Thu Apr 19 11:19:36 EDT 2018
percent_used   73.24576377868652   Thu Apr 19 11:19:36 EDT 2018

The device doesn’t support writes, so writing should fail

$ synse plugin -u /tmp/synse/procs/memory.sock write local host 65f660ac428556804060c13349e500de total 123
rpc error: code = Unknown desc = writing not enabled for device local-host-65f660ac428556804060c13349e500de (no write handler)

Now, you’ve configured, created, and run a plugin. The only thing left to do is connect it with Synse Server and access the data it provides via Synse Server’s HTTP API.

7. Using with Synse Server

In this section, we’ll go over how to deploy a plugin with Synse Server. While there are a few ways of doing it, the recommended way is to run the plugin as a container and link it to the Synse Server container. This means the plugin will be getting memory info from the container, not the host machine, but this section just serves as an example of how to do it.

The first thing we will need to do is containerize the plugin. For this, we can write a Dockerfile. For our Dockerfile, we’ll assume that the binary was built locally, but examples exist in other repos of how to use docker build stages to containerize the build process as well.

It is also important to note that all configs can be included in the Dockerfile with the plugin, but it is best practice to not do this. The prototype configs can be included, since they should not change based on the deployment, but the instance and plugin configs may change, so they should be provided at runtime.

First, we’ll make sure we have our plugin build locally. We will use the alpine linux base image, so we want to build it for linux. If you are running on linux, this can be done simply with

$ go build -o plugin

If running on a non linux/amd64 architecture, e.g. Darwin, you will need to cross-compile

$ GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -o plugin

Now, we can write our Dockerfile

Dockerfile
FROM alpine

COPY plugin plugin
COPY config/proto /etc/synse/plugin/config/proto

CMD ["./plugin"]

We can build the image as vaporio/tutorial-plugin

$ docker build -t vaporio/tutorial-plugin .

Before we run the image, we’ll want to update the plugin configuration that we will use. Instead of using unix sockets for networking, we’ll use TCP over port 5001. Change config.yml to:

version: 1.0
name: memory
debug: false
network:
  type: tcp
  address: ":5001"
settings:
  read:
    interval: 5s

Running via Docker

Now we can run the plugin, supplying the plugin and instance configurations. We will also need to specify environment variables so the plugin knows where to look for these configurations.

$ docker run -d \
    -p 5001:5001 \
    --name=tutorial-plugin \
    -v $PWD/config/device:/etc/synse/plugin/config/device \
    -v $PWD/config.yml:/tmp/config.yml \
    -e PLUGIN_CONFIG=/tmp \
    vaporio/tutorial-plugin

The plugin should now be running and waiting. You can check docker logs tutorial-plugin to view the logs and make sure everything is running correctly.

To connect it to Synse Server, you’ll need the Synse Server image. The easiest way is to just pull it from DockerHub:

$ docker pull vaporio/synse-server

We’ll also need to create a network to link them across.

$ docker network create synse
$ docker network connect synse tutorial-plugin

We’ll now run Synse Server and connect it to the network. Here, we register the tutorial plugin with Synse Server by using its environment configuration.

$ docker run -d \
    --name=synse-server \
    --network=synse \
    -p 5000:5000 \
    -e SYNSE_PLUGIN_TCP_MEMORY=tutorial-plugin:5001 \
    vaporio/synse-server

Now, you should be ready to use Synse Server to interact with the plugin. See the Interacting via Synse Server section, below.

Running via Docker Compose

All of the above can be done somewhat simpler via docker compose, using a compose file

tutorial.yml
version: "3"
services:
  synse-server:
    container_name: synse-server
    image: vaporio/synse-server
    ports:
      - 5000:5000
    environment:
      SYNSE_PLUGIN_TCP_MEMORY: tutorial-plugin:5001
    links:
      - tutorial-plugin

  tutorial-plugin:
    container_name: tutorial-plugin
    image: vaporio/tutorial-plugin
    ports:
      - 5001:5001
    volumes:
      - ./config/device:/etc/synse/plugin/config/device
      - ./config.yml:/tmp/config.yml
    environment:
      PLUGIN_CONFIG: /tmp

Then, just bring up the compose file

$ docker-compose -f tutorial.yml up -d

You should now be ready to use Synse Server to interact with the plugin. See the next section for how to do so.

Interacting via Synse Server

With Synse Server now running locally, we can interact with its HTTP API using curl.

  • Check that the server is up and ready
$curl localhost:5000/synse/test
{
  "status":"ok",
  "timestamp":"2018-04-19T16:56:16.085286Z"
}
  • Get scan information (e.g., see which devices are available). We should expect to see the single memory device managed by the plugin.
$ curl localhost:5000/synse/2.0/scan
{
  "racks":[
    {
      "id":"local",
      "boards":[
        {
          "id":"host",
          "devices":[
            {
              "id":"65f660ac428556804060c13349e500de",
              "info":"Virtual Memory Usage",
              "type":"memory"
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}
  • We can read from that device, and we should expect to get back the total, free, and percent_used readings from the memory device.
$ curl localhost:5000/synse/2.0/read/local/host/65f660ac428556804060c13349e500de
{
  "type":"memory",
  "data":{
    "total":{
      "value":2096066560,
      "timestamp":"2018-04-19T16:58:53.1370289Z",
      "unit":{
        "symbol":"B",
        "name":"bytes"
      }
    },
    "free":{
      "value":91377664,
      "timestamp":"2018-04-19T16:58:53.1370605Z",
      "unit":{
        "symbol":"B",
        "name":"bytes"
      }
    },
    "percent_used":{
      "value":23.1238824782,
      "timestamp":"2018-04-19T16:58:53.137088Z",
      "unit":{
        "symbol":"%",
        "name":"percent"
      }
    }
  }
}

Now, you have successfully created, configured, and ran a Synse Plugin both on its own and as part of a deployment with Synse Server. Explore the Synse Server API to see what else you can do with it.