Forward Client RemoteIP

[gsingh-ds]

Hello There,

We are using GraphQL Mesh in front of GRPC. We want to forward request remote ip (customer ip) to the backend. Seems like there is no way to do it with GraphQL Mesh at this point, please correct me if I am wrong.

[ardatan]

There is no "forwarding" mechanism in GraphQL Mesh because GraphQL Mesh gives you a gateway schema that is served with a GraphQL Server. So in GraphQL, the execution is seperated from the HTTP pipeline.
That means you cannot assume that the client is always from HTTP etc etc.
So, you can define custom metadata to pass some information from the request like below; (In this case, the consumer is responsible of providing this data. I assume that you are using HTTP server)

sources:
   - name: MyGRPC
     ...
     metaData:
         someHeaderInfo: ["headers", "some-header"]

I will create a PR to add this to our docs :)

I'll also add support for interpolation syntax like below;

sources:
   - name: MyGRPC
     ...
     metaData:
         someHeaderInfo: "{context.req.headers['some-header']}"

Thank you for reminding us for missing documentation :)

[ardatan]

Documents have been added! Let us know if it doesn't work for you!

[gsingh-ds]

Well, I understand why this is a problem but our application needs the client IP to work. Using headers to do so is risky that it can be tempered with. Do you think there is any way or hack to get this done?

[ardatan]

req.ip should also have the IP address of the client.

[gsingh-ds]

So here is the setup request comes from user then to GraphQL server and then hits out backend server .
user -- > graphql --> grpcserver

I used your method , I added new header in mesh config. like
testheader: ["req", "ip"]

When I log this header in grpcserver it shows 127.0.0.1 I am expecting user ip

[ardatan]

If you are testing this by calling the local server, it is expected to get 127.0.0.1.
Also if you serve Mesh behind the proxy, you can only access the real address with x-forwarded-for header.
req is NodeJS Incoming Message object by the way. You can take a look at their docs to learn more.
For the future reference, those are not actually Mesh features. When you use Mesh with a server that exposes request object within context. Those are the only things I can suggest.

[gsingh-ds]

So our service is deployed on AWS App mesh. There is Virtual Gateway and envoy proxy infront of graphql mesh.
ref image: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ibY5P.png.
I have tried x-forward-for header, seems like envoy does not send it.

[ardatan]

Mesh basically uses Node.js, Express.js and Yoga. Hmm maybe ['req', 'socket', 'remoteAddress'] ??

[gsingh-ds]

I think I tried with ['req', 'connection', 'remoteAddress']. I will test your recommendation today. I hope it will work.

[gsingh-ds]

Well, It did not work I think because of envoy proxy as a side car, the output of ['req', 'socket', 'remoteAddress'] comes out to be 127.0.0.1. Well, my only hope is to get X-Forward-For header from envoy proxy at this time. If you have any other recommendations. Please let me know.

[ardatan]

IP information depends on the environment. There is no standard way to get the remote ip. If you are behind a proxy, you can get it from req.headers['x-forward-for'].
So this is not a bug in Mesh actually. Closing the issue.