distributor/docs/integrations/http-upload.md

HTTP Upload API Contract

Audience: producers, operators, and maintainers integrating with distributor serve.

distributor serve exposes a local HTTP upload API for pipelines whose source backend is http_upload. Each bearer token maps to exactly one configured pipeline.

Authentication

Uploads authenticate with:

Authorization: Bearer <token>

Token values are resolved from the configured source.token_env through the process environment or secrets.directory. Tokens are not configured as YAML literal values.

Requests that include pipeline or pipeline_id query parameters are rejected. The bearer token selects the pipeline.

Endpoints

GET /healthz

Returns 200 OK when the server is running:

{"status":"ok"}

POST /upload

Accepts one source bundle archive and returns after the archive is staged and validated.

Accepted content types:

• application/x-tar
• application/gzip
• application/x-gzip

Successful admission returns 202 Accepted:

{"run_id":"reports.20260604T120000Z.abcdef12","status":"accepted"}

Common error responses:

• 400: pipeline query supplied, archive rejected, malformed archive, or invalid staged source bundle.
• 401: missing, empty, or unknown bearer token.
• 413: upload body exceeds the selected pipeline size limit.
• 415: unsupported content type.
• 503: upload queue is full.

Error bodies use:

{"error":"<message>"}

GET /runs/<run-id>

Returns an in-memory status record while retained:

{
  "run_id": "reports.20260604T120000Z.abcdef12",
  "pipeline_id": "reports",
  "status": "succeeded",
  "accepted_at": "2026-06-04T12:00:00Z",
  "started_at": "2026-06-04T12:00:01Z",
  "finished_at": "2026-06-04T12:00:02Z",
  "report": {}
}

Status values are accepted, queued, running, succeeded, and failed. Failed records include error. Succeeded and failed records may include a run report.

Unknown, malformed, expired, or process-lost run ids return 404.

Archive Contract

Upload archives must be uncompressed tar or gzip-compressed tar. The archive must contain exactly one root-level manifest.json and all manifest-listed files.

Archive entry rules:

• Paths must be clean relative slash-separated paths.
• Absolute paths, backslashes, . and .. segments, duplicate files, and nested manifest.json entries are rejected.
• Only directories and regular files are accepted.
• Symlinks, hardlinks, devices, FIFOs, sockets, and other entry types are rejected.

The uploaded archive size and extracted bundle size are bounded by the selected pipeline's source.max_upload_size. Extracted file count is also bounded by the implementation.

Queue And Retention

server.http.queue_size bounds accepted-but-not-started uploads plus uploads being staged. server.http.max_concurrency bounds publishing concurrency. The coordinator does not run two uploads for the same pipeline concurrently.

Completed status records expire after server.http.retention; expiration removes committed staged bundle directories for completed uploads. Server restart clears queue state and status records.

Boundaries

The HTTP API does not expose pipeline selection by request parameter, TLS, public routing policy, or durable status storage. Put public access controls, TLS termination, and rate limiting in deployment infrastructure.

Tests

Before changing this contract, inspect and run:

go test ./internal/app ./internal/ingest