AWS API GW always establishes WebSocket connection - websocket

I have AWS API GW in WebSocket mode with HTTP integration(not proxy mode).
The problem is that my service can return any response code for the $connect endpoint but API GW always establishes a connection with a client.
But in the documentation I see this:
Until execution of the integration associated with the $connect route is completed, the upgrade request is pending and the actual connection will not be established. If the $connect request fails (e.g., due to AuthN/AuthZ failure or an integration failure), the connection will not be made.

Related

In AWS WebSocket API (API Gateway), can I send a message to the client in the $connect route?

When my lambda gets ivoked due to $connect route getting invoked, can I safely send a message to the connection id at this point. Or is the connection not yet fully established? Is it a better idea to use a HTTP response header?
Yes, you should be able to as you will have the client's connectionID. The docs say the connection is established when your integration execution completes.

Unable to establish a websocket connection for GraphQL subscription

I am trying to implement a GraphQL WebSocket-based #subscription on a server (using NestJS #subscription). The server is hosted on an AWS ECS and is behind an ALB.
We currently have an AWS API GW connection via VPC-link to our ALB.
I tried to build a dedicated Websocket API GW with the same VPC link we use in the HTTP API GW.
I also tried to spin up a new NLB (Network Load Balancer) over our ECS and a new REST VPC link to be used in the dedicated Websocket API GW.
The client and server are communicating over a graphql-transport-ws sub-protocol using graphql-ws library and the communication is working fine on a localhost setup.
When running the following command on our local host I am able to establish a web socket connection:
wscat -c ws://localhost:3000/graphql -s graphql-transport-ws
When running the same against the WebSocket API GW URL
wscat -c wss://*****.execute-api.*****.amazonaws.com/**** -s graphql-transport-ws
I’m getting this:
error: Server sent no subprotocol
The error indicates a problem with the sub-protocol so when removing the sub-protocol a connection is established and I am getting a prompt:
Connected (press CTRL+C to quit)
>
However, there’s no indication of reaching the server and it seems like the connection is only made with the WebSocket API GW itself.
When I circumvent the gateway and directly connect an internet-facing NLB I'm able to establish a WebSocket connection.
I am not a super Websocket expert, but I understand WebSocket connections will be terminated by the API Gateway and cannot be used as a connection pass-through. You can forward web socket events using AWS_PROXY integration to a graphQL server backend, BUT it's not a maintained direct connection - API Gateway terminates and events towards the backend integration and will not return the integration response to the WebSocket since it is event-driven and not a connection-oriented service - hence the “error: Server sent no subprotocol” you are seeing.
So to use API GW as the WebSocket layer, you would need to build out connection management functionality somewhere to manage the event-based nature of the APIGW and send out data to the APIGW connections or adjust the integration mechanism within the graphql server to utilise the #connection functionality to send responses/notifications to WebSocket consumers.
Integrating Backend Service documentation:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/apigateway-websocket-api-routes-integrations.html
Sending responses to a connected client:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/apigateway-how-to-call-websocket-api-connections.html
API GW Websockets are great for building custom solutions but take some effort since you will be configuring the setup for the events.
For a GraphQL API on AWS - I would recommend taking a look at AppSync, which is an AWS Managed GraphQL service - it handles GraphQL subscriptions via WebSockets natively and with zero additional code and its highly scalable out of the box and would simplify the GraphQL hosting burden of an ECS based solution.
I suspect there may be a lot of other reasons for the need to build out using existing GraphQL on ECS, so understand it's not always possible to pivot to something like AppSync. I feel the NLB solution you tried is okay within the existing ECS backend landscape and, as you have noted, is connection-oriented (via NLB), so will achieve the outcome you are after.

HTTPS over Socks5 server implementation

I am trying to implement a Socks5 server that could relay both HTTP and HTTPS traffic.
As the RFC1928 mentions, the following steps to establish a connection and forward the data must be taken :
Client sends a greeting message to the proxy.
Client & proxy authentication (assuming it is successful).
Client sends a request to the proxy to connect to the destination.
The proxy connects to the destination and sends back a response to the client to indicate a successful open tunnel.
The proxy reads the data from the client and forwards it to the destination.
The proxy reads the data from the destination and forwards it to the client.
So far, the proxy works as it should. It is able to relay HTTP traffic using its basic data forwarding mechanism. However, any request from the client to an HTTPS website will be aborted because of SSL/TLS encryption.
Is there another sequence/steps that should be followed to be able to handle SSL/TLS (HTTPS) traffic?
The sequence you have described is correct, even for HTTPS. When the client wants to send a request to an HTTPS server through a proxy, it will request the proxy to connect to the target server's HTTPS port, and then once the tunnel is established, the client will negotiate a TLS handshake with the target server, then send an (encrypted) HTTP request and receive an (encrypted) HTTP response. The tunnel is just a passthrough of raw bytes, the proxy has no concept of any encryption between the client and server. It doesn't care what the bytes represent, its job is just to pass them along as-is.

Subscriptions error on Hasura GraphQL Engine deployed with Cloudfoundry on AWS

Hasura GraphQL Engine is deployed on a Cloudfoundry instance backed by AWS, it is exposed at a subdomain via an AWS ELB. The console is exposed at https://hasura.cloud.domain.com/console and the GraphQL API accepts queries at https://hasura.cloud.domain.com/v1alpha1/graphql.
But when a subscription is executed from console, an error happens with the following log on JS Console:
vendor.js:1 WebSocket connection to 'wss://hasura.cloud.domain.com/v1alpha1/graphql' failed: Error during WebSocket handshake: Unexpected response code: 200
Analyzing the websocket frames on Chrome indicates an error with (Opcode -1).
Basically, the client is unable to open a websocket connection.
Some load balancers do not support passing WebSocket handshake requests containing the Upgrade header to the CF router. For instance, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) does not support this behavior. In this scenario, you must configure your load balancer to forward TCP traffic to your CF router to support WebSockets.
ref: https://docs.cloudfoundry.org/adminguide/supporting-websockets.html#config
Basically, there is some configuration required with AWS ELB and CF Router to get websockets working. This is typically done by setting up a non-standard port to forward all TCP connections to the CF Router. We have learned from our clients that this port is typically 4443.
So, to get websocket connections to work, choose the endpoint as wss://hasura.cloud.domain.com:4443/v1alpha1/graphql for websocket connections and thus subscriptions.
The console can be opened at https://hasura.cloud.domain.com:4443 as well.

Jersey client gets 504 when server keeps processing request

I have a Jersey client and server. And I see this behavior:
In client I post a request
In the server I see the request and start to handle it
Then out of a sudden I receive an empty response with status 504 to the client while the server still processes the request
I've set the client properties to have read and connect timeouts much higher than the time I get the empty response
After further analysis - the gateway timeout was due to a Load-Balancer between the client and the server.
Reconfiguring the timeout in the Load-Balancer solved the issue

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