Fix tool federation, tool refresh and provide dropdown for tools

[madhav165]

✨ Feature / Enhancement PR

🔗 Epic / Issue

Closes #116
Makes progress on #135

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🚀 Summary (1–2 sentences)

• Allow tools with same names coming from different gateways to be added separately
• Refresh tool list from gateway after Activate/Deactivate cycle or Edit Gateway action
• Use drop downs to select tools in server creation and editing screens

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🧪 Checks

• make ruff passes
• make bandit passes
• make lint passes
• make test passes
• CHANGELOG updated (if user-facing)

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📓 ADRs

Refer to the ADRs for detailed changes.

• Tool federation - docs/docs/architecture/adr/011-tool-federation.md
• Drop down for tool selection in servers - docs/docs/architecture/adr/012-dropdown-ui-tool-selection.md

[crivetimihai]

Awesome PR, but needs a bit more testing / fixes to merge. See:

Linting and smoketest: pass

✔️ make jsonlint yamllint tomllint ruff flake8
✔️ make smoketest

Running in docker with SSL on host

✔️ make docker-prod docker-run-ssl-host

curl -k https://localhost:4444/health` # {"status":"healthy"}
export MCPGATEWAY_BEARER_TOKEN=$(python3 -m mcpgateway.utils.create_jwt_token --username admin --exp 0 --secret my-test-key)
curl -sk -H "Authorization: Bearer $MCPGATEWAY_BEARER_TOKEN" https://localhost:4444/version | jq '.uptime_seconds' # 211

✔️ https://localhost:4444/admin/ - all tabs work
✔️https://localhost:4444/version - works and shows correct data, correctly requires auth when not going through front page
✔️https://localhost:4444/redoc https://localhost:4444/docs API docs pages load AFTER auth
✔️make docker-logs # shows no errors

❌ Adding a server according to README.md

npx -y supergateway --stdio "uvenv run mcp_server_time -- --local-timezone=Europe/Dublin" --port 8003 &
❌ curl -s -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $MCPGATEWAY_BEARER_TOKEN" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"name":"local_time","url":"http://localhost:8003/sse"}' \
     https://localhost:4444/gateways

❌ Error in logs:

INFO:httpx:HTTP Request: POST http://localhost:8003/message?sessionId=0934e914-e707-4260-8493-fc76b97fbff9 "HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted"
ERROR:mcpgateway.services.gateway_service:Other grouped errors: (NameError("name 'unicode' is not defined"),)
127.0.0.1:50766 - "POST /admin/gateways HTTP/1.1" 500

Running in docker compose with Postgres and Redis

❌ make compose-up # after I changed gateway image to: mcpgateway/mcpgateway:latest (from previous make docker-prod) - database migration (alembic) does not exist so my old database won't work.

curl -sk -H "Authorization: Bearer $MCPGATEWAY_BEARER_TOKEN" http://localhost:4444/version  | jq -c '.database, .redis'
# {"dialect":"postgresql","url":"postgresql://postgres@postgres:5432/mcp","reachable":true,"server_version":"17.5 (Debian 17.5-1.pgdg120+1)"}
# {"available":true,"url":"redis://redis:6379/0","reachable":true,"server_version":"8.0.1"}

❌ http://localhost:4444/
✗ make compose-logs 
gateway-1     | sqlalchemy.exc.ProgrammingError: (psycopg2.errors.UndefinedColumn) column tools.original_name does not exist
gateway-1     | LINE 1: SELECT tools.id, tools.original_name, tools.url, tools.descr...

❌ This seems to require cleanup of previous db but is still incompatible with postgresql:

make compose-down compose-rm; docker volume rm mcp-context-forge_pgdata

gateway-1     |   File "/app/.venv/lib64/python3.11/site-packages/sqlalchemy/engine/base.py", line 1963, in _exec_single_context                                                                                  gateway-1     |     self.dialect.do_execute(                                                                                                                                                                      gateway-1     |   File "/app/.venv/lib64/python3.11/site-packages/sqlalchemy/engine/default.py", line 943, in do_execute                                                                                          gateway-1     |     cursor.execute(statement, parameters)                                                                                                                                                         gateway-1     | psycopg2.errors.DatatypeMismatch: foreign key constraint "server_metrics_server_id_fkey" cannot be implemented                                                                                    gateway-1     | DETAIL:  Key columns "server_id" and "id" are of incompatible types: integer and character varying.        

Key columns "server_id" and "id" are of incompatible types: integer and character varying

This suggests that the constraints only work with sqlite (or perhaps sqlite doesn't try to enforce them)

❌ make test fails - unit testing for test_gateway_service.py, test_server_service.py, test_tool_service.py, test_admin.py, test_main.py, test_schemas.py, test_ui_version.py:

FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/services/test_gateway_service.py::TestGatewayService::test_update_gateway_name_conflict - assert 'Gateway already exists with name' in "Failed to update gateway: Class 'unittest.mock.MagicMock' is not mapped"
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/services/test_server_service.py::TestServerService::test_register_server - pydantic_core._pydantic_core.ValidationError: 2 validation errors for ServerRead
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/services/test_server_service.py::TestServerService::test_list_servers - pydantic_core._pydantic_core.ValidationError: 2 validation errors for ServerRead
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/services/test_server_service.py::TestServerService::test_get_server - pydantic_core._pydantic_core.ValidationError: 2 validation errors for ServerRead
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/services/test_server_service.py::TestServerService::test_update_server - pydantic_core._pydantic_core.ValidationError: 2 validation errors for ServerRead
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/services/test_server_service.py::TestServerService::test_toggle_server_status - pydantic_core._pydantic_core.ValidationError: 2 validation errors for ServerRead
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/services/test_tool_service.py::TestToolService::test_register_tool - pydantic_core._pydantic_core.ValidationError: 3 validation errors for ToolRead
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/services/test_tool_service.py::TestToolService::test_list_tools - pydantic_core._pydantic_core.ValidationError: 3 validation errors for ToolRead
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/services/test_tool_service.py::TestToolService::test_get_tool - pydantic_core._pydantic_core.ValidationError: 3 validation errors for ToolRead
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/services/test_tool_service.py::TestToolService::test_toggle_tool_status - pydantic_core._pydantic_core.ValidationError: 3 validation errors for ToolRead
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/services/test_tool_service.py::TestToolService::test_update_tool - pydantic_core._pydantic_core.ValidationError: 3 validation errors for ToolRead
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/test_admin.py::TestAdminServerRoutes::test_admin_get_server - AssertionError: assert <MagicMock na...601517212064'> == {'id': 1, 'name': 'Server 1'}
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/test_admin.py::TestAdminServerRoutes::test_admin_add_server - AssertionError: Expected 'register_server' to have been called once. Called 0 times.
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/test_admin.py::TestAdminServerRoutes::test_admin_edit_server - AssertionError: Expected 'update_server' to have been called once. Called 0 times.
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/test_admin.py::TestAdminToolRoutes::test_admin_get_tool - AssertionError: assert <MagicMock na...601518376672'> == {'id': 1, 'name': 'Tool 1'}
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/test_main.py::TestAPIEndpoints::test_list_servers_endpoint - pydantic_core._pydantic_core.ValidationError: 2 validation errors for ServerRead
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/test_main.py::TestAPIEndpoints::test_rpc_tool_invocation - AssertionError: expected call not found.
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/test_schemas.py::TestServerSchemas::test_server_read - pydantic_core._pydantic_core.ValidationError: 4 validation errors for ServerRead
FAILED tests/unit/mcpgateway/test_ui_version.py::test_admin_ui_contains_version_tab - sqlalchemy.exc.OperationalError: (sqlite3.OperationalError) no such column: tools.original_name

I think the code change significantly enough to require updates to the unit tests as well.

Thanks!

[madhav165]

@crivetimihai Thanks for the detailed notes. Working on them.

[madhav165]

@crivetimihai Code has been fixed. Will update the test cases to match the current datatypes and make the PR ready for review.

[crivetimihai]

@madhav165 drafted but not tested #184 - we should probably merge that one FIRST, then this after rebase / db migration?

Note: As we start to get closer to a 'stable release' and lift the 'Development Status :: 4 - Beta' tag - we'll include changelog notes and documentation on Alembic schema migrations, etc. for breaking changes. We may also consider releasing the configuration Export feature prior (perhaps 0.2.1 - 2025-07-01) to give folks a way to export configs before breaking DB changes - drafted #185.

Let's talk tomorrow.

[crivetimihai]

I think we're in good enough shape to merge:

PR Test Matrix

Automated Checks

• All checks pass

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CLI / Make

• make test — 333/333 pass with a old SQLite db
• make test — 333/333 pass with a new SQLite db
• make smoketest # fixed by changing test to include gateway slug
• make docker-prod docker-run-ssl-host # or podman-.. then run some manual tests..

curl -sk https://localhost:4444/health
curl -sk https://localhost:4444/ready
export MCPGATEWAY_BEARER_TOKEN=$(python3 -m mcpgateway.utils.create_jwt_token --username admin --exp 0 --secret my-test-key)
curl -sk -H "Authorization: Bearer $MCPGATEWAY_BEARER_TOKEN" https://localhost:4444/version

• make dist verify
• make devpi-install devpi-init devpi-start devpi-setup-user devpi-upload devpi-test

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Admin UI & API

• Visit:

• /admin/, /redoc/, /docs, /version

• Add time MCP Server to Registry :

docker run -p 8080:8080 --rm -it ghcr.io/ibm/fast-time-server:0.2.0
# or cd mcp-servers/go/fast-time-server; make build ...

• Tools: Global Tools > get_current_time
• Virtual Server: tooltip/checkbox for multiple tool select
• Click all tabs
• Gateway toggle (deactivate/reactivate)
• Tool call: get_current_time

curl -sk -H "Authorization: Bearer $MCPGATEWAY_BEARER_TOKEN" https://localhost:4444/version
curl -sk -H "Authorization: Bearer $MCPGATEWAY_BEARER_TOKEN" https://localhost:4444/tools

Docker Compose (test with Postgres and Redis) with OLD database (migration)

• Change to image: mcpgateway/mcpgateway:latest in docker-compose.yml && make compose-up

Keep your old PostgreSQL volume to test the migration

make compose-stop compose-rm
make compose-up compose-logs

[X] Docker Compose (test with Postgres and Redis) with NEW database

docker volume rm mcp-context-forge_pgdata
make compose-stop compose-rm
make compose-up compose-logs

🧪 Other tests

• mcpgateway.translate works (only did basic start test)
• mcpgateway.wrapper stdio works
• prompt/resource templates work
• root-level SSE / subscriptions work
• SSE Connection from Copilot
• Streamable HTTP connection test from Copilot or Claude
• mcpgateway.translate
• prompt/resource templates (advanced)
• root-level SSE / subscriptions

- [X] Helm Chart

• Helm rollout works with PostgreSQL migration (new db)

Not tested: upgrade

Issues to solve after PR merge

• Adding multiple tools require using CTRL to select multiple items
• Removing (editing a virtual server) individual tools not possible need to clear all and start over
• When a gateway becomes unavailable, the tools remain in the virtual server - consider propagation / inactivation
• Add retries to DB [Feature Request]: Configurable Connection Retries for DB and Redis #179