Offer test brokers

[fmvilas]

I would like to propose that we make use of our Digital Ocean credits to host various message brokers for people to use during testing/development. In the spirit of test.mosquitto.org. I often find myself defaulting to MQTT during the implementation of a new feature solely because it has a test broker I can quickly use. It's really handy.

Here's a draft list of the brokers/protocols I would like us to expose:

• Kafka
• AMQP 0-9-1 (RabbitMQ)
• AMQP 1.0 (ActiveMQ)
• MQTT (Mosquitto) — Not really needed since we have test.mosquitto.org but worth considering.
• MQTT over WebSocket (Mosquitto) — Not really needed since we have test.mosquitto.org but worth considering.
• WebSocket (an echo server)
• Socket.IO (an echo server)

They could be available under URLs like kafka.asyncapi.com, amqp.asyncapi.com, ws.asyncapi.com, etc. Additionally, these URLs can contain web pages that explain how to use them and make it clear they are test brokers not suitable for production usage.

Operational concerns

Offering these brokers will create some operations work. My suggestion is that we keep them as simple as possible and, since they're test brokers, there's no commitment they'll have 99.x% uptime. Just like the Mosquitto test broker 🤷

To ease operations, they would wipe out all the data daily or even every few hours to make sure it doesn't grow too much. They can also be configured to not retain messages or at least not for too long (when it applies).

Additional use cases

These could potentially be used from (future) Studio, CLI, and Glee to help users prototype and try their definitions quickly.

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Pinging @asyncapi/tsc_members just so you're aware, let's NOT consider this a voting since many people are out for holidays.

[GeraldLoeffler]

that would indeed be really useful and a great service to developers - even simpler than spinning up a container with a broker. If all operations incl. purge/restart are fully automated then it may be sustainable. I'd probably also automate credential rotation and the publishing of the current credentials on the website.

[smoya]

I love this suggestion and I believe we are up to it.

A really great addition for the developers of EDA 💯.
Some people might think this is not needed at all, suggesting running a local cluster via Docker is enough. However, when speaking about making a quick test or proving something works in the client side, nothing faster than what @fmvilas is suggesting here. I mean, thats why mosquitto project has its own public test server!

[M3lkior]

This is a good idea ;

In the same idea, maybe a Microcks instance can do the job ?

[fmvilas]

You mean a Microcks instance instead of the broker or along with the broker?

[M3lkior]

yep just a Microcks instance to simulate every broker type instead of deploying each of them but with this approach, no sandbox for the users

[AceTheCreator]

This is really an awesome idea, and definitely a useful one for quick prototyping.

[emilianozublena]

Agreed with everyone over here. Think it's a very good idea and as long as we prune those instance every couple of hours and publish credentials as automated as it can be, it could be sustainable. El sáb, 24 dic. 2022 06:32, Fran Méndez ***@***.***> escribió:

…

You mean a Microcks instance instead of the broker or along with the broker? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#557 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AADR5TYJJXP63W3CYCVTH43WO27KTANCNFSM6AAAAAATHMQFWE> . You are receiving this because you are on a team that was mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[derberg]

Some info regarding proposed protocols:

• Postman already does these for WebSocket and Socket.io -> https://blog.postman.com/introducing-postman-websocket-echo-service/
• If there is something from MQTT already, then I don't see a point in adding our own
• For AMQP, RabbitMQ is enough for both protocol versions
• For Kafka, we already have an instance that is used in Event Gateway demo. At the moment, it is hosted thanks to support from aiven.io (Lorna). Nothing is written in stone there, not formalized support - I mean.

Tbh I do not recommend current Digital Ocean credits. Our DO account is not a bottomless well 😅 . It got calculated to be enough for current services, demos of services, or stuff like chatbot. Anything above will eat the budget pretty quickly. This is also why for Event Gateway we didn't put Kafka on DO but instead contacted AsyncAPI-friends and ended up having it sponsored by Aiven.

Additionally, these URLs can contain web pages that explain how to use them and make it clear they are test brokers not suitable for production usage.

We definitely can have a single website where we list all of these, also giving credits to those that host/sponsor
We can even maintain redirects if we want.

Pro Hint
Also, in the end, you can also do stuff like: docker run -it -p 1883:1883 eclipse-mosquitto:1.5 😛