gen_api_live

Overview ¶

Command gen_api_live pins what a booted GitLab says its own REST API is.

It boots a released gitlab-ee image, runs one Ruby script inside it through gitlab-rails runner, and writes the answer to docs/development/gitlab-api-live.json with provenance. Every audit then reads that record offline. The boot is a generator and never a gate: an audit that needed Docker could not run in CI or on a contributor's machine, which is the same division cmd/gen_graphql_schema already keeps.

Why a boot rather than a read ¶

The two records this replaced were both readings of text: the OpenAPI document GitLab generates from its Grape definitions, fetched, and the Grape source itself, scanned for the condition each field is sent under. Both were downstream of the object that decides what a request returns, and both lost the same thing, a name that is not written down. Both are gone.

Measured against this record on GitLab 19.3.1-ee, with the static record's inheritance resolved: 551 of 582 entities agree exactly and 31 do not, and in those the instance has 1935 fields the scanner never saw. GeoSiteStatus is 606 against 26, ApplicationSetting 680 against 81, MemberRole 50 against 5. None of that is a parser bug. GeoSiteStatus exposes its fields by iterating a constant assembled from two method calls, so the source says "expose the loop variable" and the names exist only after the class loads.

The same holds for conditions. The instance carries 914 where the scan finds 388, and every one of them is recorded as what it tests: 873 block conditions with their text read back from the image, 32 symbol conditions with the option they name, and 9 hash conditions with their data. And for the licensed feature table, where the scan's own source concedes it cannot read the lists the table builds by concatenation.

Until schema version 3 the 41 hash and symbol conditions arrived as their kind alone. The script asked for an instance variable grape-entity never sets and had no key for a symbol, and an unreadable condition was then dropped by the reader, so the 41 fields they gate, custom_attributes on seventeen entities among them, read downstream as sent on every response. The script now goes through each condition class's public reader, which raises rather than reads nil if grape-entity renames it, and this command refuses to write or to pass a record holding a condition that carries neither text, hash nor symbol.

Fine-grained authorization ¶

Since schema version 4 the same boot records what each route and each GraphQL element demands of a fine-grained personal access token, which is what issue 952 needs to say per action which permissions a token must be granted. GitLab's own permission tasks walk the same objects and are not loaded in a production image, so the script repeats their walk:

• every route's `route_setting :authorization`, key for key as lib/api/helpers.rb reads it, a callable boundary located and quoted like a block condition, and any key it does not know recorded by name;
• the permission vocabulary: every assignable permission, deprecated ones kept, with the raw permissions it expands to and the words GitLab's refusal prints, every raw permission, and for each raw one the first assignable GitLab names and the first one a token can actually be granted, which differ for seventeen at 19.4.1;
• the anonymous policy evaluated on an unsaved public project, with every feature enabled and every licensed feature made available, and on an unsaved public group, which is what GitLab serves a token beyond its grant; the role file is a lower bound of it;
• every GraphQL object type with whether the granular check runs on it, its abilities, its directives and the signature of every object-typed field, every union and interface with its possible types, every mutation with the directives GitLab's runtime check reads (its class's) and, only where it differs, the reading GitLab's permission task makes of its field, every field-level directive, and the undeclared set computed with GitLab's own todo rule beside the authorization_todo.txt the image ships.

-check refuses a version 4 record that lacks either block, falls below the fine-grained floors, maps a raw permission to an assignable that is not its own or offers one no token can hold, declares a permission GitLab does not define or no assignable expands to, declares permissions with no boundary, names a boundary type GitLab does not resolve, carries a key or argument nothing reads, holds a directive with both a skip and permissions or neither, holds a mutation whose field and class GitLab's two readers would disagree about, computes an undeclared set that differs from GitLab's list, leaves an abstract type without members or a field leading nowhere, or holds a public set that does not say how it was produced. The generator refuses to write the same record. -check alone also refuses a source block whose figures, the four the provenance always carried and the fine-grained ones, are not what the content gives, since a passing run prints them as the record's own.

What it cannot give ¶

One released version and one edition. The static record is pinned to master, so a field merged after the latest release is in that record and not in this one. For a 1:1 surface that is the right direction, since an endpoint nobody can call yet is not a gap, but it is a difference and the record says which version it is.

Nor where a hash or a symbol condition was written. grape-entity keeps a block condition's Proc, which knows its file, and for the other two kinds only the options they test, while an exposure records no location of its own. The record therefore quotes all three kinds and locates only blocks, so an edition read from a condition's file never answers ee for the other two: an epic's reference is gated by `if: { with_reference: true }` in ee/lib/api/entities/epic.rb and reads with no edition.

And it cannot correct a wrong annotation. GET /api/v4/keys is annotated APIEntitiesUserWithAdmin and the endpoint presents an SSH key with a user under it; reading the annotation from the running router gives the same wrong answer as reading it from the document, because it is the same annotation. Only calling the endpoint settles that.

Usage ¶

go run ./cmd/gen_api_live/                       # boot, introspect, write
go run ./cmd/gen_api_live/ -check                # gate the committed record, no Docker
go run ./cmd/gen_api_live/ -dump introspect.json # write from an existing dump
go run ./cmd/gen_api_live/ -keep                 # leave the container running

The boot takes a few minutes the first time, while the image is pulled, and about forty seconds afterwards. It needs no license and no fixtures: the Enterprise classes are loaded whatever the license says, because a license gates feature_available? when a request is served and not when a class is defined.