Using ServiceStack as an API Facade layer

Question

We currently have one big C# ServiceStack API project for all the services within our system. I want to split this up into smaller API's that all run separately, for ease of deployment and testing. Pretty similar to what's described here by Mike Hadlow.

However, instead of using Nginx I'd like to use ServiceStack as the reverse proxy. This "external" API would handle authentication concerns and then forward any incoming request to the relevant internal API, using an async HTTP REST call.

How would I create this service forwarder, though? Let's say I have an internal API that accepts a /hello call. If I try to create a custom ServiceRunner on the external API host I cannot just intercept ANY call. It still expects certain routes to be present, so calling /hello on the external API fails. Do I need to create dummy /hello route on the external API host in order to be able to intercept them with my own ServiceRunner? Looking at the rest of ServiceStack I'm sure there's a cleaner way.

Bonus points if it can still be combined with Swagger :)

Answer 1

At the time this question was originally asked, there was no simple way of creating a wildcard route off the the root of the service base url. I.e. if the service was hosted at the root, there was no simple way to create a /{*} wildcard route, same if the service was hosted at another point, say /api, there was no simple way to create a /api/{*} wildcard route.

However, support for a Fallback route has recently been added to ServiceStack (see detailed example implementation.) Using a Fallback route, you can proxy all unrecognized requests to the back-end without having to enumerate them in your ServiceStack project. Doesn't provide Swagger support, however.

Answer 2

You can easily convert ServiceStack into a Reverse Proxy with the new Proxy Feature added in v4.5.10.