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I am new to the Envoy proxy. I am trying to understand the filters basic config for "http_connection_manager"

I have this code :

filter_chains:
    - filters:
        - name: envoy.filters.network.http_connection_manager
          typed_config:
            "@type": type.googleapis.com/envoy.extensions.filters.network.http_connection_manager.v3.HttpConnectionManager
            codec_type: auto
            stat_prefix: ingress_http

I need help in understanding what is the meeting of :

  1. name: envoy.filters.network.http_connection_manager --- ( I think it is an inbuild HTTP filter of some kind)

  2. "@type":type.googleapis.com/envoy.extensions.filters.network.http_connection_manager.v3.HttpConnectionManager --- (I have no idea, what is this )

I tried to understand it from official docs and also read some medium posts, some youtube videos, but still, I have not able to decode the meaning of these lines.

If somebody has an answer, I will be grateful. even any resource, post or video link, or any kind of info is also appreciated, please share those if possible. thanks

1101 tech
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1 Answers1

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  1. The name field indicates the common name of the extension you want to turn on. They typically have enough information in the name to give you a little bit of a handle on what they do and where in the toolchain they are.
    • envoy means this is packaged straight with envoy. Not a 3rd party extension
    • filters means this is a filter extension. Envoy does also support other types of extensions, though filters is probably the most common.
    • network means this is a network filter. This operates at the TCP level. You'll also commonly see http here for filters that operate on HTTP requests.
    • http_connection_manager the specific filter. This is the HTTP connection manager, which does basically what it says: handles all the HTTP connections. Without this you don't get HTTP route handling, header manipulation, virtual hosts, etc. full features
  2. The type is indicating the exact spec of the protobuf config that will be sent to the filter to initialize it and trigger behavior. It's a bit opaque, just know that each filter has a v2 and a v3 set of configuration options available. For any given filter, the envoy docs do link to their typed config. E.g. the kafka broker page and the direct proto definition
justincely
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  • also, related: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63473416/envoy-configuration-possible-values-of-type-keys – justincely Mar 01 '21 at 19:16
  • Thanks a lot. this answer really helped me a lot to understand. I do not have enough points to upvote your answer, or I will do that. – 1101 tech Mar 02 '21 at 04:49
  • No worries at all, glad to be helpful. Even without enough points though, you can still accept my answer as the one that solved your problem by clicking the green arrow. [instructions](https://stackoverflow.com/help/someone-answers) – justincely Mar 02 '21 at 15:49
  • did it, accepted as an answer. i did not know that. – 1101 tech Mar 03 '21 at 04:53
  • did you know any resources to read what this '@type' is? I now understand fully what the 'name' field indicates, but still '@type' is not clear. – 1101 tech Mar 03 '21 at 04:59
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    the `@type` is the specifier for the configuration payload. E.g. the `http_connection_manager` has a different configuration type than the `kafka_broker`. For your example above, it's saying that the config that follows is going to be a protobuf message with [these](https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/blob/b4b82411487d66290da72948b3090ad2ed605c96/api/envoy/extensions/filters/network/http_connection_manager/v3/http_connection_manager.proto#L3) fields – justincely Mar 03 '21 at 15:32