MEP 20 -- Support RESTful API for Milvus
Current state: Under Discussion
ISSUE: https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/issues/7700
PRs:
Keywords: Restful API
Released:
Summary(required)
Implement a http server on proxy module, serves http request and convert to same request type as grpc request.
Motivation(required)
Milvus 1.1 used to support restful API, we've also seen many other search engines such as elastic search and solr supports both http and rpc requests. It would be much easier for applications written in language such as PHP and rust to use http to utilize milvus.
Public Interfaces(optional)
(see https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus/blob/master/internal/proto/milvus.proto)
According to gRPC, the HTTP resource names can be:
- collections
- partitions
- aliases
- indexes
- records
- compactions
- ...
APIs: TODO: translate gRPC interface in RESTful API.
service MilvusService { // (omit api version prefix) // POST /collections rpc CreateCollection(CreateCollectionRequest) returns (common.Status) {} // DELETE /collections/:collectionName rpc DropCollection(DropCollectionRequest) returns (common.Status) {} // GET /collections/:collectionName rpc HasCollection(HasCollectionRequest) returns (BoolResponse) {} // PUT /collections/:collectionName/load rpc LoadCollection(LoadCollectionRequest) returns (common.Status) {} // DELETE /collections/:collectionName/load rpc ReleaseCollection(ReleaseCollectionRequest) returns (common.Status) {} // GET /collections/:collectionName/schema rpc DescribeCollection(DescribeCollectionRequest) returns (DescribeCollectionResponse) {} // GET /collections/:collectionName/statistics rpc GetCollectionStatistics(GetCollectionStatisticsRequest) returns (GetCollectionStatisticsResponse) {} // GET /collections-list rpc ShowCollections(ShowCollectionsRequest) returns (ShowCollectionsResponse) {} // POST /collections/:collection/partitions rpc CreatePartition(CreatePartitionRequest) returns (common.Status) {} // DELETE /collections/:collection/partitions/:partition rpc DropPartition(DropPartitionRequest) returns (common.Status) {} // GET /collections/:collection/partitions/:partition rpc HasPartition(HasPartitionRequest) returns (BoolResponse) {} // PUT /collections/:collection/partitions/:partition/load rpc LoadPartitions(LoadPartitionsRequest) returns (common.Status) {} // DELETE /collections/:collection/partitions/:partition/load rpc ReleasePartitions(ReleasePartitionsRequest) returns (common.Status) {} // GET /collections/:collection/partitions/:partition/statistics rpc GetPartitionStatistics(GetPartitionStatisticsRequest) returns (GetPartitionStatisticsResponse) {} // GET /collections/:collection/partitions-list rpc ShowPartitions(ShowPartitionsRequest) returns (ShowPartitionsResponse) {} // ... }
Design Details(required)
Web module
As we can see from the milvus v2 architecture, all the gRPC requests first go into the Access Layer, which is the milvus-proxy service, where the requests are then propagated to other funtional services of milvus. So that's where we should put our web server.
Let's take a close look inside the milvus-proxy
Above is the dataflow of milvus-proxy while receiving requests, modules left of the green dotted line is inside milvus-proxy
- The gRPC call received by gRPC server is decoded into a req struct which is defined in protobuf
- The corresponding method handler is called with the req struct, where the req body is wrapped as a task.
- The task is then put into taskScheduler's taskQueues by its request type as DDL, DML or DQL (we don't have DCL for now). For example, the CreateCollection task goes into the DML queue.
- The task is then dequeued by taskScheduler. Some "pre-execution" process will be done, such as request validations, assign some default values and etc.
- The request is then propagated to other components of milvus.
So the best way to reuse code is as below:
We integrate these green colored modules to milvus-proxy, so that it can handle http calls.
After the http request parsed, it's translated into the same req struct as we mentioned above, and the rest things can be done by the gRPC handlers which were already implemented.
Web Framework
We'll use golang for easy integration with current proxy. And we'll use GIN is the most popular and also easy to use golang web framework.
TODO Tasks:
Preparation:
- Refine the design details.
- Decide on which web server framework we should use.
- Initialize the framework together with an example of API code.
Coding:
- Implements the APIs listed in milvus.proto one by one: each of us first claims a part of all the APIs, and finish them. (38 APIs in all)
- Convert gRPC method to RESTful API
- Implement API handler
- Write unit test
Testing:
- Add integration tests.
Docs:
Provide samples for user, such as implementing a hello milvus with http client
Test Plan(required)
- unit test with the go `httptest` package: example
- Integratin Test with http client.