It looks as though the Ratel UI doesn’t work with long URLs. I was accessing the server via the k8s API. For example:
http://localhost:8080/api/v1/namespaces/dgraph/services/dgraph-server:8080/proxy/
using kubectl proxy.
Also, it would be great if the UI and/or server supported CORS.
Long URLs should work. I’ve used a URL like this in Ratel before: http://localhost:8080/api/v1/proxy/namespaces/default/services/dgraph-server-0-public:8080/
What’s the use case for CORS? The Dgraph Server URL in Ratel can be any publicly accessible endpoint.
Without CORS, I can’t run digraph-ratel locally and connect to a server elsewhere. The browser will deny access.
WRT long URLs, it doesn’t seem to work. When I try to send requests, it sends them to the wrong location (looking in the console).
Is there something different between my setup and yours? I can connect to other Dgraphs outside of a local Ratel served on localhost.
What do you see in browser at the following link? http://localhost:8080/api/v1/namespaces/dgraph/services/dgraph-server:8080/proxy/health?debug=true
Dgraph server adds CORS headers and responds to pre-flight. We rely on those features at tour.dgraph.io for example. What else do you need for your use case?
Against v1.0.8 running in k8s (GKE) via the kubectl proxy:
curl -v -H "Origin: http://localhost:8000" -H "Referer: http://locahost:8080/" "http://localhost:8080/api/v1/namespaces/dgraph/services/dgraph-server:8080/proxy/health?debug=true"
> GET /api/v1/namespaces/dgraph/services/dgraph-server:8080/proxy/health?debug=true HTTP/1.1
> Host: localhost:8080
> User-Agent: curl/7.54.0
> Accept: */*
> Origin: http://localhost:8000
> Referer: http://locahost:8080/
>
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Audit-Id: 9e8da082-e575-4d61-bc21-6615bdadbb8e
< Content-Length: 2
< Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
< Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2018 16:35:19 GMT
<
No Access-Control-Allow-Origin header is returned
From the browser (Safari) console:
[Error] Origin http://localhost:8000 is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.
[Error] Failed to load resource: Origin http://localhost:8000 is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin. (keywords, line 0)
[Error] Fetch API cannot load http://localhost:8080/api/v1/namespaces/dgraph/services/dgraph-server:8080/proxy/ui/keywords?debug=true. Origin http://localhost:8000 is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.
[Error] Origin http://localhost:8000 is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.
[Error] Failed to load resource: Origin http://localhost:8000 is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin. (health, line 0)
[Error] Fetch API cannot load http://localhost:8080/api/v1/namespaces/dgraph/services/dgraph-server:8080/proxy/health?debug=true. Origin http://localhost:8000 is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.
There are no CORS headers returned.
Ah ha! The K8S proxy is dropping the headers. If you forward the port from the server pod it returns the CORS headers.
This is a K8S + DGraph issue.
I’m not sure you can blame dgraph here - it’s doing its job by sending the headers. we can’t ban middlemen from stripping them, in most cases we don’t even know if middlemen are there 
I’m not very familiar with k8s, are you using one of our official dgraph-<somehing>.yaml config files or running your own config with extra proxy settings?
Well… using custom headers is generally a bad idea for web protocols.
Since Dgraph has no security controls, you can’t expose a public service. You have to proxy ingresses for connecting to the database.