nova/api-guide/source/microversions.rst

Microversions

API v2.1 supports microversions: small, documented changes to the API. A user can use microversions to discover the latest API microversion supported in their cloud. A cloud that is upgraded to support newer microversions will still support all older microversions to maintain the backward compatibility for those users who depend on older microversions. Users can also discover new features easily with microversions, so that they can benefit from all the advantages and improvements of the current cloud.

There are multiple cases which you can resolve with microversions:

• Older clients with new cloud

Before using an old client to talk to a newer cloud, the old client can check the minimum version of microversions to verify whether the cloud is compatible with the old API. This prevents the old client from breaking with backwards incompatible API changes.

Currently the minimum version of microversions is 2.1, which is a microversion compatible with the legacy v2 API. That means the legacy v2 API user doesn't need to worry that their older client software will be broken when their cloud is upgraded with new versions. And the cloud operator doesn't need to worry that upgrading their cloud to newer versions will break any user with older clients that don't expect these changes.

• User discovery of available features between clouds

The new features can be discovered by microversions. The user client should check the microversions firstly, and new features are only enabled when clouds support. In this way, the user client can work with clouds that have deployed different microversions simultaneously.

Version Discovery

The Version API will return the minimum and maximum microversions. These values are used by the client to discover the API's supported microversion(s).

Requests to '/' will get version info for all endpoints. A response would look as follows:

{
  "versions": [
      {
          "id": "v2.0",
          "links": [
              {
                  "href": "http://openstack.example.com/v2/",
                  "rel": "self"
              }
          ],
          "status": "SUPPORTED",
          "version": "",
          "min_version": "",
          "updated": "2011-01-21T11:33:21Z"
      },
      {
          "id": "v2.1",
          "links": [
              {
                  "href": "http://openstack.example.com/v2.1/",
                  "rel": "self"
              }
          ],
          "status": "CURRENT",
          "version": "2.14",
          "min_version": "2.1",
          "updated": "2013-07-23T11:33:21Z"
      }
  ]
}

"version" is the maximum microversion, "min_version" is the minimum microversion. If the value is the empty string, it means this endpoint doesn't support microversions; it is a legacy v2 API endpoint -- for example, the endpoint http://openstack.example.com/v2/ in the above sample. The endpoint http://openstack.example.com/v2.1/ supports microversions; the maximum microversion is '2.14', and the minimum microversion is '2.1'. The client should specify a microversion between (and including) the minimum and maximum microversion to access the endpoint.

You can also obtain specific endpoint version information by performing a GET on the base version URL (e.g., http://openstack.example.com/v2.1/). You can get more information about the version API at versions.

Client Interaction

A client specifies the microversion of the API they want by using the following HTTP header:

X-OpenStack-Nova-API-Version: 2.4

This acts conceptually like the "Accept" header. Semantically this means:

• If X-OpenStack-Nova-API-Version is not provided, act as if the minimum supported microversion was specified.
• If X-OpenStack-Nova-API-Version is provided, respond with the API at that microversion. If that's outside of the range of microversions supported, return 406 Not Acceptable.
• If X-OpenStack-Nova-API-Version is latest (special keyword), act as if maximum was specified.

Warning

The latest value is mostly meant for integration testing and would be dangerous to rely on in client code since microversions are not following semver and therefore backward compatibility is not guaranteed. Clients should always require a specific microversion but limit what is acceptable to the microversion range that it understands at the time.

This means that out of the box, an old client without any knowledge of microversions can work with an OpenStack installation with microversions support.

Two extra headers are always returned in the response:

• X-OpenStack-Nova-API-Version: microversion_number
• Vary: X-OpenStack-Nova-API-Version

The first header specifies the microversion number of the API which was executed.

The second header is used as a hint to caching proxies that the response is also dependent on the X-OpenStack-Nova-API-Version and not just the body and query parameters. See 2616 section 14.44 for details.