Kong API Gateway — Complete Enterprise Gateway Guide

In this tutorial, you will learn about Kong API Gateway. We cover key concepts, practical examples, and best practices to help you master this topic.

Kong API Gateway is one of the most popular open-source API gateways. Built on NGINX and LuaJIT, it offers high performance with a plugin-based architecture for extending functionality.

What You'll Learn

You'll learn how to deploy Kong, configure services and routes, and use plugins for authentication, Rate Limiting, and monitoring.

Why It Matters

Kong powers APIs at thousands of companies including some of the largest internet platforms. Its plugin ecosystem and performance make it a top choice for API gateway deployments.

Real-World Use

A SaaS company migrated from a custom gateway to Kong. They configured 50 services, added JWT authentication, rate limiting, and logging plugins. The Migration took one week and reduced gateway code by 90%.

Implementation

# Docker Compose Kong setup
version: '3.8'
services:
  kong-database:
    image: postgres:13
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: kong
      POSTGRES_USER: kong
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: kong

  kong-migrations:
    image: kong:3.5
    command: kong migrations bootstrap
    environment:
      KONG_DATABASE: postgres
      KONG_PG_HOST: kong-database

  kong:
    image: kong:3.5
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
      - "8443:8443"
      - "8001:8001"
    environment:
      KONG_DATABASE: postgres
      KONG_PG_HOST: kong-database
      KONG_PROXY_ACCESS_LOG: /dev/stdout
      KONG_ADMIN_ACCESS_LOG: /dev/stdout

# Kong CLI configuration
# Add service
curl -i -X POST http://localhost:8001/services \
  --data name=user-service \
  --data url=http://user-service:3000

# Add route
curl -i -X POST http://localhost:8001/services/user-service/routes \
  --data paths[]=/api/users

# Add plugin
curl -i -X POST http://localhost:8001/services/user-service/plugins \
  --data name=rate-limiting \
  --data config.minute=100

Common Mistakes

| Mistake | Fix | |---------|-----| | Using DB mode for development | Use DB-less (declarative) mode for simpler config | | No health checks on upstreams | Traffic sent to dead services | Configure active health checks | | Not setting upstream timeouts | Slow upstreams hold connections | Set connect_timeout, read_timeout, write_timeout | | Overusing free plugins | Kong Enterprise has better features | Evaluate if enterprise features are needed | | No monitoring plugin | Debugging issues is difficult | Install Prometheus and http-log plugins |

What's Next

Learn about AWS API Gateway for cloud-native API management.