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Using Custom Entities

Kong Ingress Controller provides an interface to configure Kong Gateway entities using CRDs.

Some Kong Gateway plugins define custom entities that require configuration. These entities can be configured using the KongCustomEntity resource.

The KongCustomEntity resource contains a type field which indicates the type of Kong entity to create, and a fields property which can contain any values that need to be set on an entity.

In the following example, a degraphql_routes entity is created with two properties, uri and query.

spec:
  type: degraphql_routes
  fields:
    uri: "/contacts"
    query: "query{ contacts { name } }"

This corresponds to the uri and query parameters documented in the plugin documentation

Tutorial: DeGraphQL custom entities

Prerequisites: Install Kong Ingress Controller with Gateway API support in your Kubernetes cluster and connect to Kong. This guide requires Kong Gateway Enterprise.

Prerequisites

Install the Gateway APIs

Install the Gateway API CRDs before installing Kong Ingress Controller.

 kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/gateway-api/releases/download/v1.1.0/standard-install.yaml

Create a Gateway and GatewayClass instance to use.

echo "
---
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: GatewayClass
metadata:
  name: kong
  annotations:
    konghq.com/gatewayclass-unmanaged: 'true'

spec:
  controllerName: konghq.com/kic-gateway-controller
---
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Gateway
metadata:
  name: kong
spec:
  gatewayClassName: kong
  listeners:
  - name: proxy
    port: 80
    protocol: HTTP
    allowedRoutes:
      namespaces:
         from: All
" | kubectl apply -f -

The results should look like this:

gatewayclass.gateway.networking.k8s.io/kong created
gateway.gateway.networking.k8s.io/kong created

Install Kong

You can install Kong in your Kubernetes cluster using Helm.

Add the Kong Helm charts:

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

Create a file named license.json containing your Kong Gateway Enterprise license and store it in a Kubernetes secret:

 kubectl create namespace kong
 kubectl create secret generic kong-enterprise-license --from-file=license=./license.json -n kong

Create a values.yaml file:

 gateway:
   image:
     repository: kong/kong-gateway
   env:
     LICENSE_DATA:
       valueFrom:
         secretKeyRef:
           name: kong-enterprise-license
           key: license

Install Kong Ingress Controller and Kong Gateway with Helm:

 helm install kong kong/ingress -n kong --create-namespace --values ./values.yaml

Test connectivity to Kong

Kubernetes exposes the proxy through a Kubernetes service. Run the following commands to store the load balancer IP address in a variable named PROXY_IP:

Populate $PROXY_IP for future commands:

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

Ensure that you can call the proxy IP:

 curl -i $PROXY_IP

The results should look like this:

 HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
 Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
 Connection: keep-alive
 Content-Length: 48
 X-Kong-Response-Latency: 0
 Server: kong/3.0.0
  
 {"message":"no Route matched with those values"}

This example configures custom entities for the degraphql plugin, which allows you to access a GraphQL endpoint as a REST API.

Create a GraphQL Service

The degraphql plugin requires an upstream GraphQL API. For this tutorial, we’ll use Hasura to create an example GraphQL service:

echo 'apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  labels:
    app: hasura
    hasuraService: custom
  name: hasura
  namespace: default
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: hasura
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: hasura
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: hasura/graphql-engine:v2.38.0
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        name: hasura
        env:
        - name: HASURA_GRAPHQL_DATABASE_URL
          value: postgres://user:password@localhost:5432/hasura_data
        - name: HASURA_GRAPHQL_ENABLE_CONSOLE
          value: "true"
        - name: HASURA_GRAPHQL_DEV_MODE
          value: "true"
        ports:
        - name: http
          containerPort: 8080
          protocol: TCP
        resources: {}
      - image: postgres:15
        name: postgres
        env:
        - name: POSTGRES_USER
          value: "user"
        - name: POSTGRES_PASSWORD
          value: "password"
        - name: POSTGRES_DB
          value: "hasura_data"
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  labels:
    app: hasura
  name: hasura
  namespace: default
spec:
  ports:
  - protocol: TCP
    port: 80
    targetPort: 8080
  selector:
    app: hasura
---
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: hasura-ingress-console
  annotations:
    konghq.com/strip-path: "true"
spec:
  ingressClassName: kong
  rules:
  - http:
      paths:
      - path: /hasura
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: hasura
            port:
              number: 80' | kubectl apply -f -

Once the Hasura Pod is running, create an API to return contact details using the Hasura API:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type:application/json" -H "X-Hasura-Role:admin" http://${PROXY_IP}/hasura/v2/query -d '{"type": "run_sql","args": {"sql": "CREATE TABLE contacts(id serial NOT NULL, name text NOT NULL, phone text NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY(id));"}}'
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type:application/json" -H "X-Hasura-Role:admin" http://${PROXY_IP}/hasura/v2/query -d $'{"type": "run_sql","args": {"sql": "INSERT INTO contacts (name, phone) VALUES (\'Alice\',\'0123456789\');"}}'
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type:application/json" -H "X-Hasura-Role:admin" http://${PROXY_IP}/hasura/v1/metadata -d '{"type": "pg_track_table","args": {"schema": "public","name": "contacts"}}'

Configure the degraphql plugin

The degraphql entity requires you to configure a mapping between paths and GraphQL queries. In this example, we’ll map the /contact path to query{ contacts { name } }.

The KongPlugin CRD creates a new degraphql plugin, and the KongCustomEntity CRD attaches the fields to the KongPlugin in parentRef.

echo '---
apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongPlugin
metadata:
  namespace: default
  name: degraphql-example
plugin: degraphql
config:
  graphql_server_path: /v1/graphql
---
apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1alpha1
kind: KongCustomEntity
metadata:
  namespace: default
  name: degraphql-route-example
spec:
  type: degraphql_routes
  fields:
    uri: "/contacts"
    query: "query{ contacts { name } }"
  controllerName: kong
  parentRef:
    group: "configuration.konghq.com"
    kind: "KongPlugin"
    name: "degraphql-example"
' | kubectl apply -f -

Once the KongPlugin is configured, you can attach it to an Ingress:

echo '
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: demo-graphql
  annotations:
    konghq.com/plugins: "degraphql-example"
spec:
  ingressClassName: kong
  rules:
  - http:
      paths:
      - path: /contacts
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: hasura
            port:
              number: 80' | kubectl apply -f -

Test the Service with the degraphql Plugin

You can access the demo-graphql ingress with the degraphql plugin attached to verify the degraphql plugin and degraphql_routes entity works:

  curl http://${PROXY_IP}/contacts

The curl command should return

{"data":{"contacts":[{"name":"Alice"}]}}

which matches the data inserted in the previous steps.

Troubleshooting

Invalid `KongCustomEntity` Configuration

Each KongCustomEntity is validated against the schema from Kong. If the configuration is invalid, an Event with the reason set to KongConfigurationTranslationFailed will be emitted. The involvedObject of this Event will be set to the KongCustomEntity resource.

For more information on observability with events, see our events guide.