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Chapter 53: Dapr Fundamentals

You've learned Kafka directly. But what if you need to swap Kafka for RabbitMQ, or Redis, or AWS SNS? With raw clients, that's a code rewrite. Dapr (Distributed Application Runtime) abstracts these infrastructure dependencies behind portable HTTP/gRPC APIs. Your code talks to Dapr; Dapr talks to the infrastructure.

This chapter introduces Dapr's core building blocks: pub/sub, state management, service invocation, and secrets. You'll deploy Dapr on your Minikube cluster and refactor your agent to use Dapr's APIs instead of direct infrastructure clients.

The result: simpler code that's portable across infrastructures. Change Kafka to Redis by updating a YAML file, not your application code.

What You'll Learn​

By the end of this chapter, you'll be able to:

  • Understand Dapr architecture: Sidecars, building blocks, and components
  • Deploy Dapr on Kubernetes: Installation, configuration, and verification
  • Use Pub/Sub: Publish and subscribe to events through Dapr
  • Use State Management: Store and retrieve state without direct database code
  • Use Service Invocation: Call services with built-in retries and mTLS
  • Use Secrets Management: Access secrets from Kubernetes or external stores
  • Configure components: Connect Dapr to Kafka, PostgreSQL, Redis, etc.
  • Swap backends: Change infrastructure by updating YAML, not code

Chapter Structure​

  1. Dapr Architecture — Sidecars, building blocks, and the component model
  2. Installing Dapr on Minikube — CLI setup, Kubernetes deployment, and dashboard
  3. Pub/Sub Building Block — Publishing and subscribing through Dapr
  4. State Management — Storing conversation state and agent memory
  5. Service Invocation — Calling between services with resilience
  6. Secrets Management — Accessing API keys and credentials securely
  7. Component Configuration — Connecting to Kafka, PostgreSQL, and Redis
  8. Capstone: Dapr-Enabled Agent — Refactor your agent to use Dapr building blocks

Prerequisites​

  • Chapter 52: Kafka fundamentals (understand what Dapr abstracts)
  • Chapter 50-51: Kubernetes and Helm
  • Your agent service from Part 6

Looking Ahead​

This chapter covers Dapr's stateless building blocks. Chapter 54 adds stateful patterns—actors for agent state and workflows for long-running orchestration.