Rewrite paths with the konghq.com/rewrite annotation

Uses: Kong Ingress Controller

Deployment Platform:

Prerequisites

Kong Konnect

If you don’t have a Konnect account, you can get started quickly with our onboarding wizard.

The following Konnect items are required to complete this tutorial:
- Personal access token (PAT): Create a new personal access token by opening the Konnect PAT page and selecting Generate Token.
Set the personal access token as an environment variable:
```
export KONNECT_TOKEN='YOUR KONNECT TOKEN'
```
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Create a KIC Control Plane

Use the Konnect API to create a new CLUSTER_TYPE_K8S_INGRESS_CONTROLLER Control Plane:

CONTROL_PLANE_DETAILS=$(curl -X POST "https://us.api.konghq.com/v2/control-planes" \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $KONNECT_TOKEN" \
     --json '{
       "name": "My KIC CP",
       "cluster_type": "CLUSTER_TYPE_K8S_INGRESS_CONTROLLER"
     }')

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We’ll need the id and telemetry_endpoint for the values.yaml file later. Save them as environment variables:

CONTROL_PLANE_ID=$(echo $CONTROL_PLANE_DETAILS | jq -r .id)
CONTROL_PLANE_TELEMETRY=$(echo $CONTROL_PLANE_DETAILS | jq -r '.config.telemetry_endpoint | sub("https://";"")')

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Create mTLS certificates

Kong Ingress Controller talks to Konnect over a connected secured with TLS certificates.

Generate a new certificate using openssl:

openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -newkey rsa:2048 -subj "/CN=kongdp/C=US" -keyout ./tls.key -out ./tls.crt

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The certificate needs to be a single line string to send it to the Konnect API with curl. Use awk to format the certificate:

export CERT=$(awk 'NF {sub(/\r/, ""); printf "%s\\n",$0;}' tls.crt);

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Next, upload the certificate to Konnect:

curl -X POST "https://us.api.konghq.com/v2/control-planes/$CONTROL_PLANE_ID/dp-client-certificates" \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $KONNECT_TOKEN" \
     --json '{
       "cert": "'$CERT'"
     }'

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Finally, store the certificate in a Kubernetes secret so that Kong Ingress Controller can read it:

kubectl create namespace kong -o yaml --dry-run=client | kubectl apply -f -
kubectl create secret tls konnect-client-tls -n kong --cert=./tls.crt --key=./tls.key

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Kong Ingress Controller running (attached to Konnect)

Add the Kong Helm charts:

helm repo add kong https://charts.konghq.com
helm repo update

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Create a values.yaml file:

cat <<EOF > values.yaml
controller:
  ingressController:
    image:
      tag: "3.4"
    env:
      feature_gates: "FillIDs=true"
    konnect:
      license:
        enabled: true
      enabled: true
      controlPlaneID: "$CONTROL_PLANE_ID"
      tlsClientCertSecretName: konnect-client-tls
      apiHostname: "us.kic.api.konghq.com"
gateway:
  image:
    repository: kong/kong-gateway
  env:
    konnect_mode: 'on'
    vitals: "off"
    cluster_mtls: pki
    cluster_telemetry_endpoint: "$CONTROL_PLANE_TELEMETRY:443"
    cluster_telemetry_server_name: "$CONTROL_PLANE_TELEMETRY"
    cluster_cert: /etc/secrets/konnect-client-tls/tls.crt
    cluster_cert_key: /etc/secrets/konnect-client-tls/tls.key
    lua_ssl_trusted_certificate: system
    proxy_access_log: "off"
    dns_stale_ttl: "3600"
  secretVolumes:
     - konnect-client-tls
EOF

      
        
      
    
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Install Kong Ingress Controller using Helm:

helm install kong kong/ingress -n kong --create-namespace --set controller.ingressController.env.feature_gates="RewriteURIs=true" --values ./values.yaml

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Set $PROXY_IP as an environment variable for future commands:

export PROXY_IP=$(kubectl get svc --namespace kong kong-gateway-proxy -o jsonpath='{range .status.loadBalancer.ingress[0]}{@.ip}{@.hostname}{end}')
echo $PROXY_IP

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Kong Ingress Controller running

Add the Kong Helm charts:

helm repo add kong https://charts.konghq.com
helm repo update

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Install Kong Ingress Controller using Helm:

helm install kong kong/ingress -n kong --create-namespace --set controller.ingressController.env.feature_gates="RewriteURIs=true"

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Set $PROXY_IP as an environment variable for future commands:

export PROXY_IP=$(kubectl get svc --namespace kong kong-gateway-proxy -o jsonpath='{range .status.loadBalancer.ingress[0]}{@.ip}{@.hostname}{end}')
echo $PROXY_IP

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Required Kubernetes resources

This how-to requires some Kubernetes services to be available in your cluster. These services will be used by the resources created in this how-to.

kubectl apply -f https://developer.konghq.com/manifests/kic/httpbin-service.yaml -n kong

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Configure a rewrite

This feature requires the RewriteURIs feature gate to be activated and only works with Ingress resources. If you installed Kong Ingress Controller using the Helm command in the prerequisites, you should already have this feature gate enabled.

Kong Ingress Controller provides the konghq.com/rewrite annotation to customize the request path before it is sent to the upstream service.

The annotation can be used on Ingress and HTTPRoute resources, and configures a request-transformer plugin within Kong Gateway when added to a Route.

The following definition creates a Route that matches the path /external-path/(\w+) and rewrites it to /anything/$1 before sending the request upstream:

echo "
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: httpbin
  namespace: kong
  annotations:
    konghq.com/rewrite: '/anything/\$1'
    konghq.com/strip-path: 'true'
spec:
  ingressClassName: kong
  rules:
  - http:
      paths:
      - path: /~/external-path/(\w+)
        pathType: ImplementationSpecific
        backend:
          service:
            name: httpbin
            port:
              number: 80
" | kubectl apply -f -

      
        
      
    
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Alternatively, you can define this in a plugin configuration:

echo "
apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongClusterPlugin
metadata:
  name: request-transformer
  namespace: kong
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: kong
  labels:
    global: 'true'
config:
  replace:
    uri: '/anything/$(uri_captures[1])'
plugin: request-transformer
" | kubectl apply -f -

      
        
      
    
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The $1 in the annotation is expanded to $(uri_captures[1]) in the plugin configuration.

Up to nine capture groups are supported using the konghq.com/rewrite annotation. If you need more than 9 capture groups, create a KongPlugin resource to handle the transformation.

Validate your configuration

To validate that your rewrite is working, make an HTTP request to /external-path/123:

curl "$PROXY_IP/external-path/123"

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The response contains a url key which shows the URL sent to the upstream service, plus an X-Forwarded-Path header that shows the original request path.

Cleanup

Delete created Kubernetes resources

kubectl delete -n kong -f https://developer.konghq.com/manifests/kic/httpbin-service.yaml

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