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Configuring a Service

In this section, you’ll be adding an API to Kong. In order to do this, you’ll first need to add a Service; that is the name Kong uses to refer to the upstream APIs and microservices it manages.

For the purpose of this guide, we’ll create a Service pointing to the httpbin API. Httpbin is an “echo” type public website which returns the requests it gets back to the requester, as responses. This makes it helpful for learning how Kong proxies your API requests.

Before you can start making requests against the Service, you will need to add a Route to it. Routes specify how (and if) requests are sent to their Services after they reach Kong. There can be multiple Routes to a Service.

After configuring the Service and a Route, you’ll be able to proxy a request through Kong to httpbin.

By default, Kong exposes a RESTful Admin API on port 8001. You can use the Admin API to modify Kong’s configuration, including adding Services and Routes.

Before you start

You have installed and started Kong Gateway, either through the Docker quickstart or a more comprehensive installation.

1. Add a Service using the Admin API

Issue the following POST request to add your first Service to Kong. This instructs Kong to create a new Service named example-service which will accept traffic at http://httpbin.org.

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

You should receive a response similar to:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Type: application/json
Connection: keep-alive

{
   "host":"httpbin.org",
   "created_at":1519130509,
   "connect_timeout":60000,
   "id":"92956672-f5ea-4e9a-b096-667bf55bc40c",
   "protocol":"http",
   "name":"example-service",
   "read_timeout":60000,
   "port":80,
   "path":null,
   "updated_at":1519130509,
   "retries":5,
   "write_timeout":60000
}

2. Add a Route for the Service

Issue the following POST request to add a Route to the example-service. Here, we are instructing Kong to proxy requests with a Host header that contains example.com to the example-service.

curl -i -X POST \
  --url http://localhost:8001/services/example-service/routes \
  --data 'hosts[]=example.com'

The answer should be similar to:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Type: application/json
Connection: keep-alive

{
   "created_at":1519131139,
   "strip_path":true,
   "hosts":[
      "example.com"
   ],
   "preserve_host":false,
   "regex_priority":0,
   "updated_at":1519131139,
   "paths":null,
   "service":{
      "id":"79d7ee6e-9fc7-4b95-aa3b-61d2e17e7516"
   },
   "methods":null,
   "protocols":[
      "http",
      "https"
   ],
   "id":"f9ce2ed7-c06e-4e16-bd5d-3a82daef3f9d"
}

Kong is now aware of your Service and ready to proxy requests.

3. Forward your requests through Kong

Issue the following request to verify that Kong is properly forwarding requests with the Host header to the example-service. Take note that proxy requests are handled on port 8000 by default.

curl -i -X GET \
  --url http://localhost:8000/ \
  --header 'Host: example.com'

A successful response means Kong is now forwarding requests with a Host: example.com header to the httpbin Service we configured in step #1.

Next Steps

Now that you’ve added your Service to Kong, let’s learn how to enable plugins.

Go to Enabling Plugins ›