Gateway Services

Uses: Kong Gateway Admin API deck KIC Konnect API Terraform

What is a Gateway Service?

Gateway Services represent the upstream services in your system. Services are the business logic components of your system that are responsible for processing and responding to requests. Gateway Services, in conjunction with Routes, let you expose your upstream services to clients with Kong Gateway.

The configuration of a Gateway Service defines the connectivity details between the Kong Gateway and the upstream service, along with other metadata. Generally, you should map one Gateway Service to each upstream service.

Here’s how it works:

A client sends a request.
A Route matches the request based on defined rules and sends it to a specific Gateway Service.
The Gateway Service receives the request and forwards it to your actual application (the upstream service).
- For simple deployments, the upstream URL can be provided directly in the Gateway Service.
- For sophisticated traffic management needs, a Gateway Service can point at an Upstream entity.
The upstream service processes the request and sends a response back through Kong Gateway.

Plugins can also be attached to a Service, and will run against every request that triggers a request to the Service that they’re attached to.

 
flowchart LR
  A(API client)
  B("`Route 
  (/mock)`")
  C("`Gateway Service
  (example-service)`")
  D(Service 
  application)
  
  A <--requests
  responses--> B
  subgraph id1 ["`
  **KONG GATEWAY**`"]
    B <--requests
    responses--> C
  end
  C <--requests
  responses--> D

  style id1 rx:10,ry:10

Figure 1: Diagram showing the request and response flow through Kong Gateway.

Schema

Set up a Gateway Service

The following creates a new Gateway Service called example-service with basic configuration:

kong.yaml

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_format_version: "3.0"
services:
  - name: example-service
    url: http://httpbin.konghq.com

To create a Gateway Service, call the Admin API’s /services endpoint.

curl -i -X POST http://localhost:8001/services/ \
    --header "Accept: application/json" \
    --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
    --data '
    {
      "name": "example-service",
      "url": "http://httpbin.konghq.com"
    }
    '

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To create a Gateway Service, call the Konnect control plane config API’s /services endpoint.

curl -X POST https://{region}.api.konghq.com/v2/control-planes/{controlPlaneId}/core-entities/services/ \
    --header "accept: application/json" \
    --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
    --header "Authorization: Bearer $KONNECT_TOKEN" \
    --data '
    {
      "name": "example-service",
      "url": "http://httpbin.konghq.com"
    }
    '

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Make sure to replace the following placeholders with your own values:

region: Geographic region where your Kong Konnect is hosted and operates.
controlPlaneId: The id of the control plane.
KONNECT_TOKEN: Your Personal Access Token (PAT) associated with your Konnect account.

See the Konnect API reference to learn about region-specific URLs and personal access tokens.

Kong Ingress Controller doesn’t manage Services directly. Any Kubernetes resources referenced by an Ingress or Gateway API *Route resource will automatically be created.

Create a Route to get started.

Prerequisite: Configure your Personal Access Token

terraform {
  required_providers {
    konnect = {
      source  = "kong/konnect"
    }
  }
}

provider "konnect" {
  personal_access_token = "$KONNECT_TOKEN"
  server_url            = "https://us.api.konghq.com/"
}

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resource "konnect_gateway_service" "my_service" {
  url = "http://httpbin.konghq.com"

  control_plane_id = konnect_gateway_control_plane.my_konnect_cp.id
}

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The following creates a new Gateway Service called example-service with basic configuration:

Navigate to your Gateway instance:
- In Konnect, open API Gateway from the sidebar, then choose a control plane.
- In Kong Manager, select your Workspace.
Navigate to Gateway Services.
Click New Gateway Service.
Enter a unique name for the Service. In this example, it’s example-service.
Define the endpoint for this Service by specifying the full URL or by its separate elements. In this example, the full upstream URL is http://httpbin.konghq.com.
Click Save.

Gateway Services

What is a Gateway Service?

Schema

Set up a Gateway Service

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