How can you connect to cloud foundry's NATS server from within your application?

Question

I read that NATS is already deployed in cloud foundry and it is used for all the inter-component communcations. Can you connect to that NATS server from your application?

Can you get it's url?

Answer 1

I read that NATS is already deployed in cloud foundry

Correct. It is part of the platform.

and it is used for all the inter-component communcations.

If you're using Diego with CF then there's not a lot that uses NATS anymore. NATS was more heavily used with the old DEA scheduler.

NATS does still exist though even with Diego. Its primary usage is for route registration.

Can you connect to that NATS server from your application?

This all depends on how your platform is configured. For security reasons, I don't think most platform administrators are going to allow access to system components from applications (unless the operator absolutely trusts all applications being deployed to CF).

Access will likely be blocked at the network level. It might also be blocked by security group rules on CF.

Can you get it's url?

There is no NATS service broker (at least not out-of-the-box) or anything that would give you the URL automatically. You'd need to get the IP addresses and credentials for NATS from your platform administrator.

Hope that helps!