apisix-dotnet-docker VS Polly

For the demo case, we will leverage the sample project built on ASP.NET Core WEB API with a single GET endpoint (retrieves all products list) and Apache APISIX Docker sample project. You can find in README file all instructions on how to run the sample app.

Throughout the post, we get to know the types of possible failure injections with the Fault Injection Plugin 🔌 and simulate failures on our existing Product backend service (developed by using ASP.NET Core WEB API).

🙋🏼 With all the theoretical knowledge in mind, let's jump into the demo of using api-breaker plugin offered by Apache APISIX and see the result in action for our the existing sample project ASP.NET Core WEB API with a single endpoint (retrieves all products list).

Until now, I assume that you have the demo project apisix-dotnet-docker is up and running. You can see the complete source code on Github and the instruction on how to build a multi-container APISIX via Docker CLI.

✅ Clone the demo project apisix-dotnet-docker from GitHub. ✅ Understand the structure of the project and docker-compose.yaml file. ✅ Build a multi-container APISIX via Docker CLI. ✅ Configure APISIX API Gateway routing for the ASP.NET API. ✅ Enable a traffic management plugin.

In our applications, we should wrap all requests to remote services in code that implements a retry policy that follows one of the strategies I listed earlier. If you are a .NET developer like myself, you may be familiar with the Polly library. Golang has a library called Retry, and there are numerous third-party libraries for Python and Java.

Another question that rises is, would it be better to use some HttpClient package to handle the requests, like Refit in combination with Polly. But then again, it seems Refit also uses the HttpClient factory, which was a bad thing according to the previous?

D'Oh! Sorry, not PolySharp. I meant Polly. Too many similarly-named libraries!

Everywhere I've worked with AGs, we've worked with the application team to add retry logic to help make things a bit more seamless to end users. There are libraries out there that can make this pretty easy - Polly is one that I've used a few times, but there are others.

Fallacy 1: The network is reliable. If system 2 works perfectly well, but is not accessible for service 1 due to network issues, service 2 is still unavailable. This is why timeouts, service breakers and retry policies exist. A great tool for .NET to handle common network issues is Polly, but even when using a tool like this, the network is still not completely reliable.

I see. Then I don't have any better idea right now, but I do want to suggest that if your script is mostly API calls and you want to be able to deal with failures then take a look at the polly library: https://github.com/App-vNext/Polly

Runs in containers nicely, has good integration with Kafka, RabbitMQ, gRPC, etc. for Microservices communication. Implements resiliency patterns you'd want in Microservices via Polly. Has a decent Dependency Injection framework built in by default.

It's in no way hidden. But I use Polly all the time.

Depending if the sender or the reciever is down, you can also try Polly http://www.thepollyproject.org/