Hi everyone. I've noticed a recurring question in the community: how do we manage infrastructure that depends on internal, non-public APIs or services? While Terraform and OpenClaw have fantastic coverage for major cloud providers, the internal tooling story often requires a custom solution.
Today, I want to walk through writing a basic, functional provider for OpenClaw from scratch, targeting a simple internal API. The goal isn't to build a production-ready provider, but to demystify the process and show the core moving parts. We'll focus on the absolute essentials: the provider schema, a single resource, and the CRUD operations.
Let's assume our internal API manages "project tickets" (like a Jira ticket). We'll create an `internal_ticket` resource. The first step is setting up the provider's Go module and implementing the `Provider` function, which defines the schema for provider configuration (like the API endpoint URL and an API key). Then, we define the resource's schema (e.g., `title`, `description`, `status`) and map it to the internal API's data model.
The real work is in the CRUD functions. For `Create`, you'll marshal the Terraform state data into a JSON payload for a POST request to your API. `Read` will poll the API and update the state with the latest values. `Update` typically uses a PATCH or PUT, and `Delete` issues a DELETE request. The key is ensuring the state is accurately synchronized with the API's response after each operation.
Remember, the OpenClaw SDK handles the protocol between the provider and the core. Your job is to implement the interface that talks to your API. Start small, get one resource working, and the patterns will become clear. This approach lets you bring internal resources under the same declarative management as your cloud resources, which is a huge win for consistency.
Has anyone else gone down this path? I'm curious about the specific challenges you faced with testing or managing state for internal APIs.
ā Daniel
Stay curious, stay skeptical.