gateway-it-tests

name	gateway-it-tests
description	Run or debug WSO2 API Platform gateway integration tests. Use when the user asks to run gateway IT tests, BDD tests, godog tests, or a specific `.feature` file; verify a feature file passes; or debug why a gateway integration test is failing.

Gateway Integration Tests

Runs the WSO2 API Platform gateway BDD integration suite (gateway/it/, Godog + Docker Compose) for a chosen subset of feature files, diagnoses failures from container logs, and cleans up afterward.

When to use

• "Run the gateway integration tests" / "run <x>.feature"
• "Verify my new feature file passes"
• "Why is this IT test failing?" — triage from container logs
• After editing a .feature file, a policy, or gateway code, to confirm behavior

Workflow

Always run these steps in order:

1. Build the gateway images — cd gateway && make build-coverage (see Step 1). Do this first, every time, so the test stack runs the current code.
2. Run the tests for the chosen feature files via IT_FEATURE_PATHS (see Step 2).
3. Troubleshoot from container logs if anything fails (see Step 3).
4. Clean up the stack with make clean (see Step 4).

Layout

• Suite dir: gateway/it/ — run all make commands from here.
• Feature files: gateway/it/features/*.feature. Default suite list (and how IT_FEATURE_PATHS overrides it) is in gateway/it/suite_test.go → getFeaturePaths().
• Compose stack: gateway/it/docker-compose.test.yaml. Containers are named it-<service> (it-gateway-controller, it-gateway-runtime, it-sample-backend, it-echo-backend, it-mock-platform-api, it-mock-jwks, …).
• Failure logs: on any scenario failure the suite dumps all container logs to gateway/it/logs/suite_failure_<timestamp>.log.

Step 1: Build the gateway images (do this first, always)

The test stack runs from *-coverage images. Build them before every test run so the stack reflects the current code — any change to gateway-controller, gateway-runtime, policy-engine, or SDK code is otherwise invisible to the tests:

cd gateway && make build-coverage      # builds gateway-{controller,runtime}-coverage:<VERSION>

This is slow (~5-15 min). make test later retags :<VERSION> → :test via its ensure-test-tags step. Confirm the images exist afterward:

docker images --format '{{.Repository}}:{{.Tag}} {{.CreatedSince}}' | grep -E 'gateway-(runtime|controller)-coverage'

If a non-gateway test dependency is stale (e.g. mock-platform-api), rebuild that image too — see the Common failure signatures table.

Step 2: Run the chosen feature files

Run only the features you need with the IT_FEATURE_PATHS env var (comma-separated, paths relative to gateway/it/):

cd gateway/it
IT_FEATURE_PATHS=features/dynamic-endpoint.feature make test

Multiple files:

IT_FEATURE_PATHS=features/health.feature,features/dynamic-endpoint.feature make test

make test first runs ensure-test-tags (retags *-coverage:<VERSION> images to :test) then go test. Total wall time is dominated by Docker Compose startup (~60-90s) plus the scenarios.

Cold-start caveat — IMPORTANT

When a feature runs first against a freshly-started gateway, the first requests can return 503 UH no_healthy_upstream for several seconds while Envoy clusters warm and xDS syncs. The per-feature readiness wait (I wait for the endpoint ... to be ready) is only ~9s, which can be too short at cold start.

To verify a single feature reliably, prepend warm-up features so the gateway is hot by the time yours runs:

IT_FEATURE_PATHS=features/health.feature,features/api_deploy.feature,features/<target>.feature make test

This mirrors how the feature runs inside the full default suite (where it executes after ~40 other features).

Step 3: Troubleshoot a failure

When scenarios fail, find the root cause — do not just rerun. Work through:

1. Read the suite output

The summary table lists which scenario failed and the failing step. A failure at Given the gateway services are running or at a readiness wait means the stack itself is unhealthy — go to step 2. A failed assertion means the gateway did something wrong — go to step 4.

2. Check container health and exit codes

docker ps -a --filter 'name=it-' --format '{{.Names}}\t{{.Status}}'

If a container Exited (1), read its logs:

docker logs it-gateway-controller 2>&1 | tail -50
docker logs it-gateway-runtime    2>&1 | tail -50

The gateway-runtime log interleaves three sources — filter by prefix:

• [rtr] — Envoy router (access logs, routing errors)
• [pol] — policy engine (ext_proc, policy execution)
• unprefixed — the container entrypoint / process manager

3. Use the dumped failure log

The suite writes every container's logs to one file on failure:

ls -t gateway/it/logs/suite_failure_*.log | head -1

Grep it for the API/policy under test, then narrow to errors:

latest=$(ls -t gateway/it/logs/suite_failure_*.log | head -1)
grep -iE '<api-or-policy-name>' "$latest" | grep -iE 'error|warn|fail|panic|reject|503|no_healthy' | head -40

4. Reproduce manually for assertion failures

Bring up only the services you need, deploy the artifact by hand, and inspect. The controller exposes two REST APIs (basic auth admin:admin); the router is http://localhost:8080; Envoy admin is http://localhost:9901.

• Management API — http://localhost:9090/api/management/v0.9 — data-plane artifacts: REST APIs, LLM providers, LLM proxies, MCP servers, …
• Admin API — http://localhost:9090/api/admin/v0.9 — admin resources: secrets, API keys, …

Do not hard-code resource paths. Resolve the correct path, method, and payload shape from the OpenAPI specs in the repo before issuing the request — artifact types and field names drift, and the spec is the source of truth:

• gateway/gateway-controller/api/management-openapi.yaml
• gateway/gateway-controller/api/admin-openapi.yaml

Read the spec, pick the operation matching the artifact under test (e.g. POST /rest-apis, POST /llm-providers, POST /llm-proxies, POST /mcp-servers, POST /secrets, POST /api-keys), then issue it:

cd gateway/it
docker compose -f docker-compose.test.yaml up -d gateway-controller gateway-runtime sample-backend mock-platform-api mock-openapi
# Generic shape — substitute <base> and <resource> per the OpenAPI operation:
curl -s -u admin:admin -X POST '<base>/<resource>' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/yaml' --data-binary @artifact.yaml
curl -s http://localhost:8080/<context>/<path>     # invoke via the router
# inspect each component's config — see step 5 for the config_dump endpoints

Then trace the request: policy execution in [pol] logs, the upstream chosen in the [rtr] access log (upstream_cluster, response_code, response_code_details).

5. Compare config dumps across components

Each component exposes a config_dump showing the configuration it actually holds. Comparing them pinpoints which component a deployment went wrong in — config flows controller → (xDS) → policy engine and Envoy, so the first dump that looks wrong is the culprit.

# Gateway Controller — the deployment snapshot it built (APIs, routes, clusters,
# policy chains). Also /xds_sync_status to confirm xDS push state.
curl -s http://localhost:9092/api/admin/v0.9/config_dump | jq .
curl -s http://localhost:9092/api/admin/v0.9/xds_sync_status | jq .

# Policy Engine — what it received via xDS (routes, policy chains, route metadata
# such as upstream definition paths). Admin port 9002.
curl -s http://localhost:9002/config_dump | jq .

# Envoy router — live listeners, routes, and clusters. Admin port 9901.
curl -s http://localhost:9901/config_dump | jq .
curl -s http://localhost:9901/clusters            # endpoint health per cluster

Typical use: a request is routed/rewritten wrong → check the controller dump for the expected route + cluster; if correct there, check the policy engine dump for the route metadata and policy chain; if correct there, check Envoy's dump. The component where the expected config is missing or wrong is where the bug lives.

6. Pause a live scenario with Delve (last resort)

make test is the normal path — reach for Delve only when steps 1-5 above have not pinpointed the bug and you need to freeze the actual failing scenario.

Run the suite under the Delve debugger (dlv). The Compose stack is daemon-managed — started in BeforeSuite, torn down in AfterSuite — so it runs independently of the test process. While the test is paused at a breakpoint between those two points the whole stack stays live, with the scenario's exact deployed APIs present, and you can curl config dumps / invoke APIs from another terminal. Halting also pauses Go's -test.timeout clock, so inspection time is unlimited.

dlv test bypasses the Makefile, so build/tag the images first:

cd gateway/it
make ensure-test-tags        # or: cd ../ && make build-coverage
IT_FEATURE_PATHS=features/<target>.feature COMPOSE_FILE=docker-compose.test.yaml \
  dlv test . -- -test.run TestFeatures -test.v -test.timeout 0

Both break <file>:<line> and break <function> work. Function-name breakpoints survive edits to the file, so they're the more durable choice when you're not sure how many iterations you'll go through — use either as it suits. Godog step definitions are ordinary Go functions, so you can break inside any step, mid-scenario — the most useful mode, since you pause before things go wrong with the scenario's APIs already deployed. Map a Gherkin phrase to its handler by grepping the step registrations:

grep -rn 'ctx.Step(' gateway/it/      # each step regex → its handler function

Then at the (dlv) prompt break on that function by name (funcs <regexp> discovers exact names), and continue — BeforeSuite starts the stack (~60-90s), then execution stops at the breakpoint:

(dlv) funcs steps.*AssertSteps             # list candidate function names
(dlv) break steps.(*AssertSteps).<method>  # pause on an assertion, response in hand
(dlv) break steps.(*HTTPSteps).<method>    # pause on a request (the deploy step calls SendPOSTToService)
(dlv) continue

When stopped inside a step you can next / step through its code and print locals (print testState) — full Go debugging. Meanwhile, from a second terminal, the live stack is reachable: hit any component's config_dump as in step 5, or invoke the scenario's deployed API on the router (:8080).

Break at step boundaries, not mid-HTTP-call. Caveat: if you quit Delve before the suite finishes, AfterSuite never runs and containers leak — run make clean afterward.

7. Switch to source-level gateway debug (when step 6 isn't enough)

Step 6 pauses the test process. When the bug is in the gateway code itself (controller deploy handler, xDS push, policy execution) you need to pause the gateway process — hand off to the [[gateway-debug]] skill, which runs gateway-controller and policy-engine as host-side processes under dlv. The failing scenario's deploy YAML and request become the manual reproducer. Map the scenario to one of [[gateway-debug]]'s two paths:

• Scenario invokes the API on :8080 through Envoy (most .feature files — anything with When I send a … request to "http://…8080…"): take gateway-debug's Path B (request-runtime) and pick the IT handoff compose target at Step 2 so the IT mocks (mock-jwks, mock-platform-api, …) the scenario depends on stay live.
• Scenario only hits the controller REST API (api-keys, secrets, REST API CRUD, MCP / LLM-resource CRUD — never touches :8080): take gateway-debug's Path A (deployment-only) — no docker, just Step 3a.

Common failure signatures

Symptom	Likely cause	Action
it-gateway-controller exits, log shows manifest ... 404	stale mock-platform-api image missing an endpoint	docker compose -f docker-compose.test.yaml build mock-platform-api
503 UH no_healthy_upstream only at start	cold-start cluster warmup	add warm-up features (see Cold-start caveat)
Assertion mismatch on routed path/host	policy or controller xDS bug	reproduce manually, compare [pol] metadata vs [rtr] access log
No image found for ...	coverage images missing	cd gateway && make build-coverage

Step 4: Clean up — always run when finished

After tests pass (or after troubleshooting), tear the stack down:

cd gateway/it && make clean

make clean force-removes it-* containers, runs docker compose down -v --remove-orphans for every compose file, and deletes coverage/ and reports/ artifacts. If you manually started a partial stack, make clean also covers it.