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Kong Konnect

Dev Portal Overview

The Konnect Dev Portal is a customizable website for developers to locate, access, and consume API services. The Dev Portal enables developers to browse and search API documentation, test API endpoints, and manage their own credentials. Konnect offers flexible deployment options to support both internal and external APIs that can be managed from the same Konnect instance.

Publish service documentation

In Konnect, services created in the Service Hub can be published to the Dev Portal with one click. Published services become immediately available to users who the Dev Portal. When a service is published, the API spec and any Service Document are viewable. We use the term discoverable here because the Dev Portal can create a unified API experience where a developer can navigate through the different APIs that are available, read documentation, test endpoints within the Dev Portal, and register to create applications using your specific APIs.

  • Getting started guide: This guide walks you through importing an API spec, publishing your service and corresponding API spec to the Dev Portal, and configuring registration settings so that users can view your services and register applications.

  • How to publish services to the Dev Portal: This how-to explains ho* w to publish services to the Dev Portal. It also covers all of the settings associated with publishing services to the Dev Portal like access and making your Dev Portal publicly accessible.

  • How to manage documentation: This how-to explains how to perform all of the functionality related to managing API specs and service descriptions. Service descriptions are markdown files that explain the aspects of your API, like a README.

The Dev Portal lives at a separate URL from Konnect and requires that all users, including Admin roles, register as a Developer.

Developer self service

Dev Portals are created for developers to use. The Dev Portal removes the burden of credential management from the API creator, and empowers developers to manage that aspect of the application development lifecycle on their own. When developers register their application to interact with services that have been exposed through Service Hub, they will have access to an overview page for the application that they registered, on this page, they can manage their API keys. Developers can also unregister for specific services independently.

For more information on this topic, we offer several pieces of documentation depending on your use case.

For Konnect administrators:

  • Enabling and disabling application registration - This explains how to grant and rescind application registration access. Manage developer access - This doc details to a Konnect administrator all of the different options they have available to them to manage developer access to their Dev Portal. The Dev Portal offers administrators the ability to approve and reject requests for access to the Dev Portal.

  • Manage developer access- This doc details to a Konnect administrator all of the different options they have available to them to manage developer access to their Dev Portal. The Dev Portal offers administrators the ability to approve and reject requests for access to the Dev Portal.

  • Manage application registration requests - When developers want to create applications on your Dev Portal, they will have to create a request. Requests can be managed from within Konnect. This document contains instructions on how to manage application requests. If you are interested in automatically allowing application requests automatically, read our guide on handling auto approval.

For developers:

Customization

Konnect has built-in customization options for managing the Dev Portal so that you can build a consistent experience for the consumers of your API. Customizing your Dev Portal to reflect the likeness of your brand can help convince Developers to create applications with your services. With Konnect, you don’t need to have knowledge of any web frameworks, because you customize everything from the application. Konnect also has built-in themes if customization is not your immediate priority.

For more information please read our doc on customization.