When things go wrong with your API, it can sometimes be difficult to identify where a problem lies. The following guide aims to help you identify and fix the cause of issues with your API infrastructure.
API Infrastructure can be a lengthy and complex topic. However, at a minimum you will have 3 moving parts in your Infrastructure:
- The API gateway
- 3scale
- Your API
Errors between any of those three elements will result in your clients being unable to access your API. However, it won’t always be clear exactly which component caused the failure. This guide aims to give you some tips to troubleshoot your infrastructure in order to identify where things may be going wrong.
We will start with some common scenarios first, before moving on to more sophisticated troubleshooting for when it’s not clear exactly where the problem lies.
4.1.Common issues
There are a number of symptoms that can point to some very common issues with your integration with 3scale. These will vary depending on whether you are at the beginning of your API project, setting up your infrastructure, or are already live in production.
4.1.1.Integration issues
The following sections attempt to outline some common issues you may encounter during the initial phases of your integration with 3scale: at the beginning using APIcast and prior to go live running the self-managed API Gateway.
4.1.1.1.APIcast
When you’re first integrating your API with APIcast on the Service Integration screen, you might get some of the following errors shown on the page or returned by the test call you make to check for a successful integration.
Test request failed: execution expired
Check that your API is reachable from the public internet. APIcast cannot be used with private APIs. If you’re not comfortable about making your API publicly available in order to integrate with APIcast, you can always set up a private secret between APIcast and your API to reject any calls not coming from the API gateway.
The accepted format is 'protocol://address(:port)'
Remove any paths from the end of your API’s private base URL. You can add these in the "mapping rules" pattern or at the beginning of the "API test GET request".
Test request failed with HTTP code XXX
405
: Check that the endpoint accepts GET requests. APIcast only supports GET requests to test the integration.403: Authentication parameters missing
: If your API already has some authentication in place, APIcast will not be able to make a test request.403: Authentication failed
: If this is not the first service you’ve created with 3scale, check that you have created an application under the service with credentials in order to make the test request. If it is the first service you’re integrating, check that you haven’t deleted the test account/application that is created on signup.
4.1.1.2.Self-managed gateway
Once you have successfully tested the integration with APIcast, you might want to host the API gateway yourself.
These are some of the errors you might encounter when you first install your self-managed gateway and call your API through it.
500 Internal Server Error
- Check nginx error.log:failed to load external Lua file X: cannot open X: No such file or directory
- Check:- Lua file in correct directory
- Specified location correctly
- File exists
lua entry thread aborted: runtime error: <path_to_library>: module 'X' not found:
- Check:- Ensure you have installed all required dependencies
lua entry thread aborted: runtime error: access_by_lua:1: module 'X' not found:
- Check that the Lua files are in the correct location
upstream timed out (110: Connection timed out) while connecting to upstream
- Check that there are no firewalls between the API Gateway and the public internet that would prevent it from reaching 3scale.
Some other symptoms that may point to an incorrect self-managed gateway integration are as follows:
- API calls routed incorrectly: If you have multiple services pointing to different API backends, you will need to ensure you update the
server_name
directive in each server block of your nginx.conf. By default, this will be set to something like*.staging.apicast.io;
- Mapping rules not matched / Double counting of API calls: Depending on the way you have defined the mapping between methods and actual URL endpoints on your API, you might find that sometimes methods either don’t get matched or get incremented more than once per request. A good way to troubleshoot this is to make a test call to your API with the 3scale debug header. This will return a list of all the methods that have been matched by the API call.
- Authentication parameters not found: Ensure your are sending the parameters in the correct location as specified in the Service Integration screen. Please note that if you don’t choose for credentials to be sent as headers, they should be sent as query parameters for GET requests and body parameters for all other HTTP methods. You can use the 3scale debug header to double-check the credentials that are being read from the request by the API gateway.
Finally, you might see the following alerts on nginx startup:
2016/03/18 10:31:25 [alert] 9790#0: lua_code_cache is off; this will hurt performance in /path/to/nginx.conf:30
This setting is a good idea during integration as it allows you to make on-the-fly changes to your Lua code without restarting nginx. However, it should be turned on before going live. This directive is available on every server block and should be changed for all producion server blocks.
4.1.2.Production issues
It is unlikely that you’ll have many problems with your API gateway once you’ve fully tested your setup and have been live with your API for a while. However, here are some of the sorts of issues you might encounter in a live production environment.
4.1.2.1.Availability issues
Availability issues are normally characterised by seeing upstream timed out
errors in your nginx error.log, e.g.
upstream timed out (110: Connection timed out) while connecting to upstream, client: X.X.X.X, server: api.example.com, request: "GET /RESOURCE?CREDENTIALS HTTP/1.1", upstream: "http://Y.Y.Y.Y:80/RESOURCE?CREDENTIALS", host: "api.example.com"
If you are experiencing intermittent 3scale availability issues, there could be a number of reasons for this:
- You are resolving to an old 3scale IP that is no longer in use.
The latest version of the API gateway configuration files defines 3scale as a variable to force IP resolution each time. For a quick fix, reload your NGINX instance. For a longer term fix, ensure that instead of defining the 3scale backend in an upstream block, you are defining it as a variable within each server block e.g.
server { # Enabling the Lua code cache is strongly encouraged for production use. Here it is enabled . . . set $threescale_backend "https://su1.3scale.net:443";
and when you refer to it
location = /threescale_authrep { internal; set $provider_key "YOUR_PROVIDER_KEY"; proxy_pass $threescale_backend/transactions/authrep.xml?provider_key=$provider_key&service_id=$service_id&$usage&$credentials&log%5Bcode%5D=$arg_code&log%5Brequest%5D=$arg_req&log%5Bresponse%5D=$arg_resp;}
- You are missing some 3scale IPs from your whitelist. This is the current list of IPs that 3scale resolves to:
- 75.101.142.93
- 174.129.235.69
- 184.73.197.122
- 50.16.225.117
- 54.83.62.94
- 54.83.62.186
- 54.83.63.187
- 54.235.143.255
The above issues refer to problems with perceived 3scale availability. However, you might encounter similar issues with your API availability from the API gateway if your API is behind an AWS ELB. This is due to the fact that NGINX by default does DNS resolution at start-up time and then caches the IP addresses. However, ELBs do not ensure static IP addresses, and these might change from time to time. Whenever the ELB changes to a different IP, NGINX stops being able to reach it.
The solution for this is similar to the above fix for forcing runtime DNS resolution.
- Set a specific DNS resolver such as Google’s DNS. This is done by adding the following line near the top of the
http
section:resolver 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4;
- Set your API base URL as a variable, anywhere near the top of the
server
section.set $api_base "http://api.example.com:80";
- Inside the
location /
section, find the line that saysproxy_pass
and replace it with the following:proxy_pass $api_base;
If you make any changes to your API such as adding a new endpoint, you need to make sure you go through the steps to add a new method and URL mapping before downloading a new set of configuration files for your API gateway.
The most common problem when you’ve made modifications to the configuration downloaded from 3scale will be code errors in the Lua, which will result in a 500 - Internal server error
such as:
curl -v -X GET "http://localhost/"* About to connect() to localhost port 80 (#0)* Trying 127.0.0.1... connected> GET / HTTP/1.1> User-Agent: curl/7.22.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.22.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1 zlib/1.2.3.4 libidn/1.23 librtmp/2.3> Host: localhost> Accept: */*>< HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error< Server: openresty/1.5.12.1< Date: Thu, 04 Feb 2016 10:22:25 GMT< Content-Type: text/html< Content-Length: 199< Connection: close<<head><title>500 Internal Server Error</title></head><center><h1>500 Internal Server Error</h1></center><hr><center>openresty/1.5.12.1</center>* Closing connection #0
You can then look into the nginx error.log to dig down into the cause, such as:
2016/02/04 11:22:25 [error] 8980#0: *1 lua entry thread aborted: runtime error: /home/pili/NGINX/troubleshooting/nginx.lua:66: bad argument #3 to '_newindex' (number expected, got nil)stack traceback:coroutine 0: [C]: in function '_newindex' /home/pili/NGINX/troubleshooting/nginx.lua:66: in function 'error_authorization_failed' /home/pili/NGINX/troubleshooting/nginx.lua:330: in function 'authrep' /home/pili/NGINX/troubleshooting/nginx.lua:283: in function 'authorize' /home/pili/NGINX/troubleshooting/nginx.lua:392: in function while sending to client, client: 127.0.0.1, server: api-2445581381726.staging.apicast.io, request: "GET / HTTP/1.1", host: "localhost"
In the access.log this will look something like:
127.0.0.1 - - [04/Feb/2016:11:22:25 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 500 199 "-" "curl/7.22.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.22.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1 zlib/1.2.3.4 libidn/1.23 librtmp/2.3"
The above sections should give you a good overview of the most common, well-known issues that you might encounter at any stage of your 3scale journey.
If all of these have been checked and you’re still unable to find the cause and solution for your issue, you should proceed to the more detailed [operational troubleshooting](#troubleshooting-checklists) sections below. Start at your API and work your way back to the client in order to try to identify the point of failure.
4.2.Troubleshooting 101
If you’re experiencing failures when connecting to a server, whether that is the API gateway, 3scale, or your API, the following troubleshooting steps should be your first port of call:
4.2.1.1. Can we connect?
Use telnet to check basic TCP/IP connectivity telnet api.example.com 443
- Success
telnet echo-api.3scale.net 80Trying 52.21.167.109...Connected to tf-lb-i2t5pgt2cfdnbdfh2c6qqoartm-829217110.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com.Escape character is '^]'.Connection closed by foreign host.
- Failure
telnet su1.3scale.net 443Trying 174.129.235.69...telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection timed out
4.2.2.2. Is it me or is it them?
Try to connect to the same server from different network locations, devices, and directions. For example, if your client is unable to reach your API, try to connect to your API from a machine that should have access such as the API gateway.
If any of the attempted connections succeed, you can rule out any problems with the actual server and concentrate your troubleshooting on the network between them, as this is where the problem will most likely lie.
4.2.3.3. Is it a DNS issue?
Try to connect to the server by using its IP address instead of its hostname e.g. telnet 94.125.104.17 80
instead of telnet apis.io 80
This will rule out any problems with the DNS.
You can get the IP address for a server using dig
for example for 3scale dig su1.3scale.net
or dig any su1.3scale.net
if you suspect there may be multiple IPs a host may resolve to.
NB: Some hosts block `dig any`
4.2.4.4. Is it an SSL issue?
You can use OpenSSL to test:
- Secure connections to a host or IP, such as from the shell prompt
openssl s_client -connect su1.3scale.net:443
Output:
CONNECTED(00000003)depth=1 C = US, O = GeoTrust Inc., CN = GeoTrust SSL CA - G3verify error:num=20:unable to get local issuer certificate---Certificate chain 0 s:/C=ES/ST=Barcelona/L=Barcelona/O=3scale Networks, S.L./OU=IT/CN=*.3scale.net i:/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust SSL CA - G3 1 s:/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust SSL CA - G3 i:/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust Global CA---Server certificate-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----MIIE8zCCA9ugAwIBAgIQcz2Y9JNxH7f2zpOT0DajUjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQsFADBE...TRUNCATED...3FZigX+OpWLVRjYsr0kZzX+HCerYMwc=-----END CERTIFICATE-----subject=/C=ES/ST=Barcelona/L=Barcelona/O=3scale Networks, S.L./OU=IT/CN=*.3scale.netissuer=/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust SSL CA - G3---Acceptable client certificate CA names/C=ES/ST=Barcelona/L=Barcelona/O=3scale Networks, S.L./OU=IT/CN=*.3scale.net/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust SSL CA - G3Client Certificate Types: RSA sign, DSA sign, ECDSA signRequested Signature Algorithms: RSA+SHA512:DSA+SHA512:ECDSA+SHA512:RSA+SHA384:DSA+SHA384:ECDSA+SHA384:RSA+SHA256:DSA+SHA256:ECDSA+SHA256:RSA+SHA224:DSA+SHA224:ECDSA+SHA224:RSA+SHA1:DSA+SHA1:ECDSA+SHA1:RSA+MD5Shared Requested Signature Algorithms: RSA+SHA512:DSA+SHA512:ECDSA+SHA512:RSA+SHA384:DSA+SHA384:ECDSA+SHA384:RSA+SHA256:DSA+SHA256:ECDSA+SHA256:RSA+SHA224:DSA+SHA224:ECDSA+SHA224:RSA+SHA1:DSA+SHA1:ECDSA+SHA1Peer signing digest: SHA512Server Temp Key: ECDH, P-256, 256 bits---SSL handshake has read 3281 bytes and written 499 bytes---New, TLSv1/SSLv3, Cipher is ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384Server public key is 2048 bitSecure Renegotiation IS supportedCompression: NONEExpansion: NONENo ALPN negotiatedSSL-Session: Protocol : TLSv1.2 Cipher : ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 Session-ID: A85EFD61D3BFD6C27A979E95E66DA3EC8F2E7B3007C0166A9BCBDA5DCA5477B8 Session-ID-ctx: Master-Key: F7E898F1D996B91D13090AE9D5624FF19DFE645D5DEEE2D595D1B6F79B1875CF935B3A4F6ECCA7A6D5EF852AE3D4108B Key-Arg : None PSK identity: None PSK identity hint: None SRP username: None TLS session ticket lifetime hint: 300 (seconds) TLS session ticket: 0000 - a8 8b 6c ac 9c 3c 60 78-2c 5c 8a de 22 88 06 15 ..l..<`x,\.."... 0010 - eb be 26 6c e6 7b 43 cc-ae 9b c0 27 6c b7 d9 13 ..&l.{C....'l... 0020 - 84 e4 0d d5 f1 ff 4c 08-7a 09 10 17 f3 00 45 2c ......L.z.....E, 0030 - 1b e7 47 0c de dc 32 eb-ca d7 e9 26 33 26 8b 8e ..G...2....&3&.. 0040 - 0a 86 ee f0 a9 f7 ad 8a-f7 b8 7b bc 8c c2 77 7b ..........{...w{ 0050 - ae b7 57 a8 40 1b 75 c8-25 4f eb df b0 2b f6 b7 ..W.@.u.%O...+.. 0060 - 8b 8e fc 93 e4 be d6 60-0f 0f 20 f1 0a f2 cf 46 .......`.. ....F 0070 - b0 e6 a1 e5 31 73 c2 f5-d4 2f 57 d1 b0 8e 51 cc ....1s.../W...Q. 0080 - ff dd 6e 4f 35 e4 2c 12-6c a2 34 26 84 b3 0c 19 ..nO5.,.l.4&.... 0090 - 8a eb 80 e0 4d 45 f8 4a-75 8e a2 06 70 84 de 10 ....ME.Ju...p... Start Time: 1454932598 Timeout : 300 (sec) Verify return code: 20 (unable to get local issuer certificate)---
- SSLv3 support (NOT supported by 3scale)
openssl s_client -ssl3 -connect su.3scale.net:443
Output
CONNECTED(00000003)140735196860496:error:14094410:SSL routines:ssl3_read_bytes:sslv3 alert handshake failure:s3_pkt.c:1456:SSL alert number 40140735196860496:error:1409E0E5:SSL routines:ssl3_write_bytes:ssl handshake failure:s3_pkt.c:644:---no peer certificate available---No client certificate CA names sent---SSL handshake has read 7 bytes and written 0 bytes---New, (NONE), Cipher is (NONE)Secure Renegotiation IS NOT supportedCompression: NONEExpansion: NONENo ALPN negotiatedSSL-Session: Protocol : SSLv3 Cipher : 0000 Session-ID: Session-ID-ctx: Master-Key: Key-Arg : None PSK identity: None PSK identity hint: None SRP username: None Start Time: 1454932872 Timeout : 7200 (sec) Verify return code: 0 (ok)---
These are just some examples. You can find some more details on usage in the OpenSSL man pages.
4.3.Troubleshooting checklists
You should go through the following checks in order to identify where an issue with requests to your API might lie.
4.3.1.API
To confirm that the API is up and responding to requests, try to make the same request directly to your API (not going through the API gateway). You should ensure that you’re sending all of the same parameters and headers as the request that goes through the API gateway. If you’re unsure of the exact request that is failing, capture the traffic between the API gateway and your API.
If the call succeeds, you can rule out any problems with the API, otherwise you should troubleshoot your API further.
4.3.2.API Gateway > API
To rule out any network issues between the API gateway and the API, try to make the same call as before — directly to your API — from your API gateway server.
If the call succeeds, you can move on to troubleshooting the API gateway itself.
4.3.3.API gateway
There are a number of steps to go through in order to check that the API gateway is working correctly.
4.3.3.1.1. Is the API gateway up and running?
Try to log in to the machine where the gateway is running. If this fails, your gateway server might be down.
Once you have logged in, check that the NGINX process is running. You can do this by running ps ax | grep nginx
or htop
If you see nginx master process
and nginx worker process
in the list, NGINX is running.
4.3.3.2.2. Are there any errors in the gateway logs?
Here are some common errors you might see in the gateway logs, for example in error.log
- API gateway can’t connect to API
upstream timed out (110: Connection timed out) while connecting to upstream, client: X.X.X.X, server: api.example.com, request: "GET /RESOURCE?CREDENTIALS HTTP/1.1", upstream: "http://Y.Y.Y.Y:80/RESOURCE?CREDENTIALS", host: "api.example.com"
- API gateway can’t connect to 3scale
2015/11/20 11:33:51 [error] 3578#0: *1 upstream timed out (110: Connection timed out) while connecting to upstream, client: 127.0.0.1, server: , request: "GET /api/activities.json?user_key=USER_KEY HTTP/1.1", subrequest: "/threescale_authrep", upstream: "https://54.83.62.186:443/transactions/authrep.xml?provider_key=YOUR_PROVIDER_KEY&service_id=SERVICE_ID&usage[hits]=1&user_key=USER_KEY&log%5Bcode%5D=", host: "localhost"
4.3.4.API gateway > 3scale
Once you are sure the API gateway is running correctly, the next step is troubleshooting the connection between the API gateway and 3scale.
4.3.4.1.1. Can the API gateway reach 3scale?
If you’re using NGINX as your API gateway, you should see the following in the nginx error logs when the gateway is unable to contact 3scale.
2015/11/20 11:33:51 [error] 3578#0: *1 upstream timed out (110: Connection timed out) while connecting to upstream, client: 127.0.0.1, server: , request: "GET /api/activities.json?user_key=USER_KEY HTTP/1.1", subrequest: "/threescale_authrep", upstream: "https://54.83.62.186:443/transactions/authrep.xml?provider_key=YOUR_PROVIDER_KEY&service_id=SERVICE_ID&usage[hits]=1&user_key=USER_KEY&log%5Bcode%5D=", host: "localhost"
The main thing to note here is the upstream value. This IP corresponds to one of the IPs that the 3scale API Management service resolves to, so you know there is some problem reaching 3scale. You can do a reverse DNS lookup to check the domain for an IP by calling nslookup e.g.
Just because the API gateway is unable to reach 3scale, it does not necessarily mean that 3scale is down. One of the most common reasons for this would be firewall rules preventing the API gateway from connecting to 3scale.
As such, there may be some network issues between the gateway and 3scale that could cause connections to timeout. If that is happening, you should go through the steps in "troubleshooting generic connectivity issues" to identify where the problem lies.
In order to rule out networking issues, you can use traceroute or MTR to check the routing and packet transmission. It might also be useful to run the same command from a machine that is able to connect to 3scale and your API gateway and compare the output.
Additionally, to see the traffic that is being sent between your API gateway and 3scale, you can use tcpdump as long as you temporarily switch to using the HTTP endpoint for the 3scale API Management service ( su1.3scale.net
.)
4.3.4.2.2. Is the API gateway resolving 3scale addresses correctly?
Ensure you have the resolver directive added to your nginx.conf.
For example, in nginx.conf:
http { lua_shared_dict api_keys 10m; server_names_hash_bucket_size 128; lua_package_path ";;$prefix/?.lua;"; init_by_lua 'math.randomseed(ngx.time()) ; cjson = require("cjson")'; resolver 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4;
If you’d rather not use Google’s DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) you can substitute those values with your preferred DNS.
To check DNS resolution from your API gateway, you can call nslookup as follows with the specified resolver IP:
nslookup su1.3scale.net 8.8.8.8;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
The above example shows the response returned if Google DNS cannot be reached. If this is the case, you will need to update the resolver IPs. You might also see the following alert in your nginx error.log:
2016/05/09 14:15:15 [alert] 9391#0: send() failed (1: Operation not permitted) while resolving, resolver: 8.8.8.8:53
Finally, you can run dig any su1.3scale.net
to see the IP addresses currently in operation for the 3scale Service Management API. Please note that this is not the entire range of IP addresses that might be used by 3scale, as some might be swapped in and out for capacity reasons. Additionally, we may add more domain names for the 3scale API Management service in the future, so you should always test against the specific address which will have been supplied to you during integration, if applicable.
4.3.4.3.3. Is the API gateway calling 3scale correctly?
If you want to check the request your API gateway is making to 3scale — for troubleshooting purposes only — you can add the following snippet to the 3scale authrep location in nginx.conf
(/threescale_authrep
for API Key and App\_id authentication modes and /threescale_oauth_authrep
for OAuth)
body_filter_by_lua_block{ if ngx.req.get_headers()["X-3scale-debug"] == ngx.var.provider_key then local resp = "" ngx.ctx.buffered = (ngx.ctx.buffered or "") .. string.sub(ngx.arg[1], 1, 1000) if ngx.arg[2] then resp = ngx.ctx.buffered end ngx.log(0, ngx.req.raw_header()) ngx.log(0, resp) end}
You can also find the above snippet in our codehub.
This snippet will add the following extra logging to the nginx error.log when the X-3scale-debug header
is sent, e.g. curl -v -H 'X-3scale-debug: YOUR_PROVIDER_KEY' -X GET "https://726e3b99.ngrok.com/api/contacts.json?access_token=7c6f24f5"
Will produce the following log entries:
2016/05/05 14:24:33 [] 7238#0: *57 [lua] body_filter_by_lua:7: GET /api/contacts.json?access_token=7c6f24f5 HTTP/1.1Host: 726e3b99.ngrok.ioUser-Agent: curl/7.43.0Accept: */*X-Forwarded-Proto: httpsX-Forwarded-For: 2.139.235.79 while sending to client, client: 127.0.0.1, server: pili-virtualbox, request: "GET /api/contacts.json?access_token=7c6f24f5 HTTP/1.1", subrequest: "/threescale_oauth_authrep", upstream: "https://54.83.62.94:443/transactions/oauth_authrep.xml?provider_key=REDACTED&service_id=REDACTED&usage[hits]=1&access_token=7c6f24f5", host: "726e3b99.ngrok.io"2016/05/05 14:24:33 [] 7238#0: *57 [lua] body_filter_by_lua:8: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><error code="access_token_invalid">access_token "7c6f24f5" is invalid: expired or never defined</error> while sending to client, client: 127.0.0.1, server: pili-virtualbox, request: "GET /api/contacts.json?access_token=7c6f24f5 HTTP/1.1", subrequest: "/threescale_oauth_authrep", upstream: "https://54.83.62.94:443/transactions/oauth_authrep.xml?provider_key=REDACTED&service_id=REDACTED&usage[hits]=1&access_token=7c6f24f5", host: "726e3b99.ngrok.io"
The first entry (2016/05/05 14:24:33 [] 7238#0: *57 [lua] body_filter_by_lua:7:
) prints out the request headers sent to 3scale, in this case: Host, User-Agent, Accept, X-Forwarded-Proto and X-Forwarded-For.
The second entry (2016/05/05 14:24:33 [] 7238#0: *57 [lua] body_filter_by_lua:8:
) prints out the response from 3scale, in this case: <error code="access_token_invalid">access_token "7c6f24f5" is invalid: expired or never defined</error>
Both will print out the original request (GET /api/contacts.json?access_token=7c6f24f5
) and subrequest location (/threescale_oauth_authrep
) as well as the upstream request (upstream: "https://54.83.62.94:443/transactions/oauth_authrep.xml?provider_key=REDACTED&service_id=REDACTED&usage[hits]=1&access_token=7c6f24f5"
.) This last one is the most important, as it allows you not only to see which of the 3scale IPs have been resolved, but also the exact request made to 3scale.
4.3.5.3scale
4.3.5.1.1. Is 3scale available?
Check @3scalestatus on Twitter.
4.3.5.2.2. Is 3scale returning an error?
It’s also possible that 3scale is available but is returning an error to your API gateway which would prevent calls going through to your API. Try to make the authorization call directly in 3scale and check the response. If you get an error, check the #troubleshooting-api-error-codes[Error Codes] section to see what the issue could be.
4.3.5.3.3. Use the 3scale debug headers
Another option is to turn on the 3scale debug headers by making a call to your API with the X-3scale-debug
header, e.g.
curl -v -X GET "https://api.example.com/endpoint?user_key" X-3scale-debug: YOUR_PROVIDER_KEY
This will return the following headers with the API response:
X-3scale-matched-rules: /, /api/contacts.json< X-3scale-credentials: access_token=TOKEN_VALUE< X-3scale-usage: usage[hits]=2< X-3scale-hostname: HOSTNAME_VALUE
4.3.5.4.4. Check the integration errors
You can also check the integration errors on your Admin Portal to check for any issues reporting traffic to 3scale. You can find this at https://YOUR_DOMAIN-admin.3scale.net/apiconfig/errors
Some common reasons for integration errors:
- Sending credentials in the headers with
underscores_in_headers
directive not enabled in server block.
4.3.6.Client API gateway
4.3.6.1.1. Is the API gateway reachable from the public internet?
Try directing a browser to the IP address (or domain name) of your gateway server. If this fails, make sure that you have opened the firewall on the relevant ports.
4.3.6.2.2. Is the API gateway reachable by the client?
If possible, try to connect to the API gateway from the client using one of the methods outlined earlier (telnet, curl, etc…) If the connection fails, the problem lies in the network between the two.
Otherwise, you should move on to troubleshooting the client making the calls to the API.
4.3.7.Client
4.3.7.1.1. Test the same call using a different client
If a request is not returning the expected result, test with a different HTTP client. For example, if you are calling an API with a Java HTTP client and you see something weird, cross-check with cURL.
It might also help to call the API through a proxy between the client and the gateway to capture the exact parameters and headers being sent by the client.
4.3.7.2.2. Inspect the traffic sent by client
You can use a tool like Wireshark to see the requests being made by the client. This will allow you to identify whether the client is actually making calls out to the API and the details of the request.
4.4.Other Issues
4.4.1.ActiveDocs issues
You might find that sometimes calls that work when you call the API from the command line fail when going through ActiveDocs.
In order to enable ActiveDocs calls to work, we send these out through a proxy on our side. This proxy will add certain headers that can sometimes cause issues on the API if they are not expected. To identify if this is the case, you can try the following steps:
4.4.1.1.1. Use petstore.swagger.io
Swagger provides a hosted swagger-ui at petstore.swagger.io which you can use to test your Swagger spec and API going through the latest version of swagger-ui. If both swagger-ui and ActiveDocs fail in the same way, you can rule out any issues with ActiveDocs or the ActiveDocs proxy and focus the troubleshooting on your own spec. Alternatively, you can check the swagger-ui GitHub repo for any known issues with the current version of swagger-ui.
4.4.1.2.2. Check that firewall allows connections from ActiveDocs proxy
Our recommendation here would be not to whitelist IP address for clients using your API. The ActiveDocs proxy uses floating IP addresses for high availability, and there is currently no mechanism to notify of any changes to these IPs.
4.4.1.3.3. Call the API with incorrect credentials
One way to identify whether the ActiveDocs proxy is working correctly is to call your API with invalid credentials. This will help you to confirm or rule out any problems with both the ActiveDocs proxy and your API gateway.
If you get a 403 code back from the API call (or whichever code you have configured on your gateway for invalid credentials), the problem lies with your API, as the calls are reaching your gateway at the very least.
4.4.1.4.4. Compare calls
To identify any differences in headers and parameters between calls made from ActiveDocs versus outside of ActiveDocs, it can sometimes be helpful to run your calls through some sort of service (APItools on premise, Runscope, etc.) that allows you to inspect and compare your HTTP calls before sending them on to your API. This will allow you to identify any potential headers and/or parameters in the request that could be causing issues on your side.
4.5.Appendix
4.5.1.Logging in NGINX
For a comprehensive guide on this, check out the NGINX Logging and Monitoring docs.
4.5.1.1.Enabling debugging log
To find out more about this, we encourage you to check out the NGINX debugging log documentation.
4.5.2.3scale error codes
You can double-check the error codes that are returned by the 3scale Service Management endpoints by taking a look at our Service Management API ActiveDocs.
Here is a list of the most important codes returned by 3scale and the conditions under which they would be returned:
- 400: Bad request. This can be because of:
- Invalid encoding.
- Payload too large.
- Content type is invalid (for POST calls). Valid values for the
Content-Type
header are:application/x-www-form-urlencoded
,multipart/form-data
, or empty header. - 403:
- Credentials are not valid.
- Sending body data to 3scale for a GET request.
- 404: Non-existent entity referenced, such as applications, metrics, etc.
- 409:
- Usage limits exceeded.
- Application is not active.
- Application key is invalid or missing (for app\_id/app\_key authentication method).
- Referrer is not allowed or missing (when referrer filters are enabled and required).
- 422: Missing required parameters.
- 428: Too many requests — sent when you exceed 2000 reqs/s.
Most of these error responses will also contain an XML body with a machine readable error category as well as a human readable explanation.
Please note that, if using the standard API gateway configuration, any non-200 return code from 3scale will result in a 403 being returned to the client. As such, you will need to double-check the real code returned by 3scale in your API gateway logs.