moby--moby/experimental/plugin_api.md

Experimental: Docker Plugin API

Docker plugins are out-of-process extensions which add capabilities to the Docker Engine.

This page is intended for people who want to develop their own Docker plugin. If you just want to learn about or use Docker plugins, look here.

This is an experimental feature. For information on installing and using experimental features, see the experimental feature overview.

What plugins are

A plugin is a process running on the same docker host as the docker daemon, which registers itself by placing a file in /usr/share/docker/plugins (the "plugin directory").

Plugins have human-readable names, which are short, lowercase strings. For example, flocker or weave.

Plugins can run inside or outside containers. Currently running them outside containers is recommended.

Plugin discovery

Docker discovers plugins by looking for them in the plugin directory whenever a user or container tries to use one by name.

There are two types of files which can be put in the plugin directory.

• .sock files are UNIX domain sockets.
• .spec files are text files containing a URL, such as unix:///other.sock.

The name of the file (excluding the extension) determines the plugin name.

For example, the flocker plugin might create a UNIX socket at /usr/share/docker/plugins/flocker.sock.

Plugins must be run locally on the same machine as the Docker daemon. UNIX domain sockets are strongly encouraged for security reasons.

Plugin lifecycle

Plugins should be started before Docker, and stopped after Docker. For example, when packaging a plugin for a platform which supports systemd, you might use systemd dependencies to manage startup and shutdown order.

When upgrading a plugin, you should first stop the Docker daemon, upgrade the plugin, then start Docker again.

If a plugin is packaged as a container, this may cause issues. Plugins as containers are currently considered experimental due to these shutdown/startup ordering issues. These issues are mitigated by plugin retries (see below).

Plugin activation

When a plugin is first referred to -- either by a user referring to it by name (e.g. docker run --volume-driver=foo) or a container already configured to use a plugin being started -- Docker looks for the named plugin in the plugin directory and activates it with a handshake. See Handshake API below.

Plugins are not activated automatically at Docker daemon startup. Rather, they are activated only lazily, or on-demand, when they are needed.

API design

The Plugin API is RPC-style JSON over HTTP, much like webhooks.

Requests flow from the Docker daemon to the plugin. So the plugin needs to implement an HTTP server and bind this to the UNIX socket mentioned in the "plugin discovery" section.

All requests are HTTP POST requests.

The API is versioned via an Accept header, which currently is always set to application/vnd.docker.plugins.v1+json.

Handshake API

Plugins are activated via the following "handshake" API call.

/Plugin.Activate

Request: empty body

Response:

{
    "Implements": ["VolumeDriver"]
}

Responds with a list of Docker subsystems which this plugin implements. After activation, the plugin will then be sent events from this subsystem.

Plugin retries

Attempts to call a method on a plugin are retried with an exponential backoff for up to 30 seconds. This may help when packaging plugins as containers, since it gives plugin containers a chance to start up before failing any user containers which depend on them.