manifestloader

Manifest Loader

manifestloader fetches a manifest, verifies its detached signature, and caches the verified document for downstream consumers such as opapolicychecker.

One primary use case is fetching network manifests published by Network Facilitator Organizations (NFOs). Other plugins can then consume the verified manifest to configure themselves according to the policies and artifact locations defined by the NFO.

Requirements

manifestloader requires:

• a cache plugin
• a registry plugin that implements RegistryMetadataLookup

The default dediregistry plugin supports RegistryMetadataLookup. Custom registry plugins that only implement RegistryLookup can still be used for participant key lookup, but cannot be used with manifestloader until they also support registry-level metadata lookup.

Config

manifestLoader:
  id: manifestloader
  config:
    cacheTTL: 24h
    fetchTimeoutSeconds: "30"
    forceRefreshOnStartup: false
    disableCache: false
    skipSignatureVerification: false

Supported config keys:

• cacheTTL: TTL for verified manifest cache entries.
• fetchTimeoutSeconds: HTTP timeout for manifest, signature, and key fetches.
• forceRefreshOnStartup: optional. Defaults to false. Bypasses cache once per manifest key after process start, then resumes normal cache use.
• disableCache: optional. Defaults to false. Bypasses cache entirely and skips cache writes. Useful for debugging manifest changes.
• skipSignatureVerification: optional. Defaults to false. Skips fetching and verifying the manifest signature and signing public key. When enabled, ManifestDocument.Verified is set to false. For local testing and unsigned environments only — do not use in production.

Verification payloads

• manifestSignatureUrl may return raw detached signature bytes, base64-encoded signature text, or JSON with a top-level signature field.
• Signing public key lookup JSON is read only from supported fields: data.details.publicKey, data.details.signing_public_key, data.details.public_key, or legacy top-level publicKey, signing_public_key, and public_key.
• Public key fields in arbitrary nested JSON locations are ignored.

Cache behavior

• Manifest cache is independent from OPA policy refresh cadence.
• If Redis or another persistent cache backend is used, restarting ONIX does not clear cached manifests.
• forceRefreshOnStartup is the operator-friendly way to refresh stale manifests on restart without manually deleting cache keys.
• disableCache is intended for debugging and should generally be left false in production.
• skipSignatureVerification is intended for local testing with unsigned manifests and must not be enabled in production.
• The loader now logs whether a manifest came from cache, bypassed cache, or was fetched and re-verified remotely.

Trust boundary

• The manifest loader verifies the manifest itself, but it does not restrict which domains may appear inside the manifest content.
• Downstream plugins that consume a verified manifest may fetch additional policy or artifact URLs declared by the manifest publisher.
• This is an intentional trust decision: once a manifest is verified, ONIX trusts the NFO-defined artifact locations referenced by that manifest.