API Gateway Configuration
Table of Contents
Overview
Design and configure API gateways to handle routing, authentication, rate limiting, and request/response transformation for microservice architectures.
When to Use
- Setting up reverse proxies for microservices
- Centralizing API authentication
- Implementing request/response transformation
- Managing traffic across backend services
- Rate limiting and quota enforcement
- API versioning and routing
Quick Start
Minimal working example:
# kong.yml - Kong Gateway configuration
_format_version: "2.1"
_transform: true
services:
- name: user-service
url: http://user-service:3000
routes:
- name: user-routes
paths:
- /api/users
- /api/profile
plugins:
- name: rate-limiting
config:
minute: 100
policy: local
- name: jwt
config:
secret: your-secret-key
key_claim_name: "sub"
- name: cors
config:
origins:
- "http://localhost:3000"
// ... (see reference guides for full implementation)
Reference Guides
Detailed implementations in the references/ directory:
| Guide | Contents | |---|---| | Kong Configuration | Kong Configuration | | Nginx Configuration | Nginx Configuration | | AWS API Gateway Configuration | AWS API Gateway Configuration | | Traefik Configuration | Traefik Configuration | | Node.js Gateway Implementation | Node.js Gateway Implementation |
Best Practices
✅ DO
- Centralize authentication at gateway level
- Implement rate limiting globally
- Add comprehensive logging
- Use health checks for backends
- Cache responses when appropriate
- Implement circuit breakers
- Monitor gateway metrics
- Use HTTPS in production
❌ DON'T
- Expose backend service details
- Skip request validation
- Forget to log API usage
- Use weak authentication
- Over-cache dynamic data
- Ignore backend timeouts
- Skip security headers
- Expose internal IPs