kong

Kong

Kong is a cloud-native API gateway and platform for managing, securing, and observing APIs and microservices.
It provides rate limiting, authentication, load balancing, and plugin-based extensibility.

How Kong works

flowchart LR
    Client([Client]) -->|:8000| Kong[Kong Proxy]
    Kong --> ServiceA[Upstream A]
    Kong --> ServiceB[Upstream B]
    Admin([Admin]) -->|:8001| KongAdmin[Kong Admin API]
    Kong --> PG[(PostgreSQL)]

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1. Clients send requests to the Kong proxy port (8000/8443).
2. Kong matches routes and forwards traffic to configured upstream services.
3. Plugins (auth, rate-limit, logging, etc.) execute on each request.
4. The Admin API (port 8001) manages routes, services, consumers, and plugins.
5. PostgreSQL stores all Kong configuration and plugin state.

Stack details in this repo

• Kong image: kong:3.7
• Database image: postgres:16-alpine
• Container names: kong, kong-db, kong-migration
• Proxy port: 8000 (HTTP), 8443 (HTTPS)
• Admin API: http://<host-ip>:8001
• PostgreSQL: internal only

Environment variables

Set via .env (copy from .env.example):

• KONG_PROXY_PORT (default: 8000)
• KONG_PROXY_SSL_PORT (default: 8443)
• KONG_ADMIN_PORT (default: 8001)
• KONG_PG_USER (default: kong)
• KONG_PG_PASSWORD (default: changeme)
• KONG_PG_DATABASE (default: kong)

How to run

From the repository root:

cd kong
cp .env.example .env
docker compose up -d

Wait for migrations to complete, then verify:

curl http://localhost:8001/status

Open:

• Proxy: http://localhost:8000
• Admin API: http://localhost:8001

Useful commands:

docker compose ps
docker compose logs -f kong
docker compose restart
docker compose down

Use it effectively

• Add a service and route via the Admin API:

# Create a service
curl -i -X POST http://localhost:8001/services \
  --data name=example-service \
  --data url=http://httpbin.org

# Create a route
curl -i -X POST http://localhost:8001/services/example-service/routes \
  --data paths[]=/example

• Enable plugins (rate limiting, key-auth, JWT, etc.) per service or globally.
• Use Kong Manager UI (available in Kong Enterprise) or tools like Konga for a web dashboard.
• Export configuration with deck CLI for version-controlled gateway config.

Notes

• Change default database credentials before exposing externally.
• The migration container runs once and exits — this is expected behavior.
• Admin API should not be exposed publicly in production; restrict access via firewall or bind to localhost.
• See Kong docs for full plugin and configuration reference.