Service Hub Overview
The Service Hub is a Kong Konnect functionality module that lets you catalog all of your services in a single system of record. This catalog represents the single source of truth of your organization’s service inventory and their dependencies.
Using the Service Hub, you can catalog, manage, and track every service in your entire architecture.
Services in the Service Hub catalog
Each entry in the Service Hub is called a Konnect service, or service. A Konnect service is an abstraction of an upstream service.
A service in the Service Hub breaks down into multiple configuration versions, and can be implemented to route to any endpoint.
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Service: The abstraction of one of your own services. For example, it might represent a data transformation microservice or a billing API.
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Service version: One instance, or implementation, of the service with a unique configuration. A service can have many versions, and each version can have different configurations, set up for a RESTful API, gPRC endpoint, GraphQL endpoint, and others.
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Service implementation: A runnable service version. Each service version can only have one implementation.
A Konnect service isn’t associated with any specific runtime group, but every service version is. When you create a version of the service, you must select a group for the version to run on.
Note: Currently, the only supported implementation type is a Kong Gateway runtime.
The main attribute of a service version is its upstream URL, where the service listens for requests. You can specify the URL with a single string, or by specifying its protocol, host, port, and path individually.
Get started with service management →
Kong Gateway implementations
When configuring a Kong Gateway implementation of a service, you’ll need to specify a route. Routes determine how successful requests are sent to their services after they reach the API gateway. A single service version can have only one implementation, but potentially many routes.
Important: Starting with Kong Gateway 3.0.0.0, the router supports logical expressions. Regex routes must begin with a
~character. For example:~/foo/bar/(?baz\w+). Learn more in the route configuration guide.
After configuring the service, version, implementation, and at least one route, you’ll be able to start making requests through Kong Konnect.
Dev Portal
Service Hub natively integrates the Dev Portal into service configuration. Admins can publish services directly from Service Hub to the Dev Portal, where application developers can search, discover, and consume existing services.
The Dev Portal in Kong Konnect contains an API catalog, allowing you to document all of your services and their versions.
Through Service Hub, publish your service to the Dev Portal and set up the following for any service:
- Markdown documentation: A description of your service. Applies to every service version.
- Version spec: An OpenAPI (Swagger) document in YAML or JSON format. Applies to a specific service version.
Upload and publish service documentation to the Dev Portal →
Kong Gateway plugins
Plugins can be configured to run in a variety of contexts, ranging from a specific service version or route to all service versions. Plugins can execute actions inside Kong Konnect before or after a request has been proxied to the upstream API, as well as on any incoming responses.