US Patent 10289457 Systems and methods for dynamic discovery of container-based microservices

In one embodiment, a method includes determining a particular microservice to connect to an instance of a first container to provide a service. The method further includes identifying, from container metadata, one or more inputs of the first container. The method also includes searching the container metadata for containers that provide the particular microservice and whose outputs satisfy the one or more inputs of the first container. In addition, the method includes selecting a second container based on the searching, the second container comprising one or more outputs. Also, the method includes creating an instance of the second container. Furthermore, the method includes connecting the instance of the second container to the instance of the first container using the one or more outputs of the second container and the one or more inputs of the first container.