Announcing riff v0.1.2 on Knative

riff v0.1.2 on Knative is now available.
Many thanks to all the riff and Knative contributors.

install

We recommend installing riff v0.1.2 on a fresh Kubernetes cluster. The riff CLI can be downloaded from our releases page on GitHub. Please follow one of the getting started guides, to create a new cluster on GKE or minikube. Remember that you can also use the CLI to uninstall everything.

uninstall knative and istio without prompting

riff system uninstall --istio --force

install on minikube (for GKE omit --node-port)

riff system install --manifest stable --node-port

Riff will install “stable” release builds of Knative serving, eventing, and build components. You can opt to install the latest nightly builds using the new --manifest latest option.

Remember that after installing you also need to install credentials for builds to push to a docker registry, and configure a namespace. See the getting started docs for more details

install dockerhub push credentials and initialize the default namespace

kubectl apply -f dockerhub-push-credentials.yaml
riff namespace init default --secret push-credentials

feedback during builds

There are two new options to provide feedback during builds. In previous releases, riff function create would return immediately after creating the build resources, without waiting for the build to succeed or fail.

• --wait or -w waits until the build status is known
• --verbose or -v is like wait, but also relays logs to the output

For example, if you have not initialized the default namespace, creating a function with --wait will produce an error message.

create square and push image to docker

riff function create node square \
  --git-repo https://github.com/trisberg/node-fun-square.git \
  --artifact square.js \
  --image $DOCKER_ID/node-fun-square:v1 \
  --wait

Error: function creation failed: RevisionMissing: Configuration "square" does not have any ready Revision.; Revision creation failed with message: "Internal error occurred: admission webhook \"webhook.build.knative.dev\" denied the request: mutation failed: serviceaccounts \"riff-build\" not found".

Using --verbose instead of --wait is useful in situations where the cause of an error can be deduced from container logs.

function chaining over channels

Knative/eventing can now relay the reponse of a function to a another channel. This can be configured through the riff CLI by specifying the output channel with --output or -o when creating a subscription.

In this example, we will build a chain consisting of 3 functions and 2 channels. The random function posts numbers to the square function via the numbers channel, which forwards the output of square to the squares channel, for processing by the hello function.

To keep things interesting, we’ll build the 3 functions in 3 different ways.

• square uses a Knative build, pulling source code from github, and pushing the image to a registry.
• hello is built manually with the docker CLI and a Dockerfile.
• random uses a prebuilt image pulled from dockerhub.

square function

The command below runs an in-cluster build of the square function, and pushes the image to dockerhub. For gcr, replace $DOCKER_ID with your gcr.io/$GCP_PROJECT.

create square and push image to docker

riff function create node square \
  --git-repo https://github.com/trisberg/node-fun-square.git \
  --artifact square.js \
  --image $DOCKER_ID/node-fun-square:v1 \
  --wait

use watch to monitor pods

watch -n 1 kubectl get pod --all-namespaces

For the first build, you may see the square-00001-xxxx build pod show a status of Init:0/4 for several minutes. Once built, the square function will show up as a pod called square-00001-deployment-xxxxxxxxx-xxxxx.

When the square function is running, you should be able to invoke it.

riff service invoke square -- -w '\n' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -d 7

hello function

In this case, we’ll start with a javascript function and a Dockerfile in a directory. Notice that the function logs its ouput in addition to returning it. We’ll use this to monitor the output of the function chain.

hello.js

module.exports = x => {
  var out = 'hello ' + x
  console.log(out)
  return out
}

Dockerfile

FROM projectriff/node-function-invoker:0.0.8
ENV FUNCTION_URI /functions/hello.js
ADD hello.js ${FUNCTION_URI}

Build the function image, and use it create a Knative Service.

build locally for minikube

eval $(minikube docker-env)

docker build -t dev.local/hello:v1 .
riff service create hello --image dev.local/hello:v1

The dev.local prefix tells Knative to use the local docker daemon instead of pulling an image from a remote container registry.

build for dockerhub

docker build -t $DOCKER_ID/hello:v1 .
docker push $DOCKER_ID/hello:v1
riff service create hello --image $DOCKER_ID/hello:v1

For gcr, replace $DOCKER_ID with your gcr.io/$GCP_PROJECT.

Using a tool like kail makes it easy to watch the function container log.

start kail in a separate terminal window

kail -d hello-00001-deployment -c user-container

invoke hello

riff service invoke hello -- -w '\n' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -d riff

kail output

default/hello...[user-container]: hello riff

random function

We have published an image on dockerhub for the random function. The source can be found on GitHub. This function posts random numbers between 0 and 999 to a channel or to another function.

Create the random function using the image from dockerhub.

riff service create random --image jldec/random:v0.0.2

Invoke the function to send posts to hello.

riff service invoke random -- -w '\n' \
  -H 'Content-Type:application/json' \
  -d '{"url":"http://hello.default.svc.cluster.local"}'

The kail log of the hello function from above should show the numbers as they are generated

default/hello...[user-container]: hello riff
default/hello...[user-container]: hello 315
default/hello...[user-container]: hello 980
default/hello...[user-container]: hello 122
default/hello...[user-container]: hello 891

wiring everything together

create the numbers and squares channels

riff channel create numbers --cluster-bus stub
riff channel create squares --cluster-bus stub

create two subscriptions.

riff service subscribe square --input numbers --output squares
riff service subscribe hello --input squares

configure the random function to post to the numbers channel.

riff service invoke random -- -w '\n' \
  -H 'Content-Type:application/json' \
  -d '{"url":"http://numbers-channel.default.svc.cluster.local"}'

Now the hello function should show the output of square and hello chained together.

default/hello...[user-container]: hello 549081
default/hello...[user-container]: hello 88804
default/hello...[user-container]: hello 786769
default/hello...[user-container]: hello 1225
default/hello...[user-container]: hello 525625