API Gateway Configuration

Table of Contents

• [Overview](#overview)
• [When to Use](#when-to-use)
• [Quick Start](#quick-start)
• [Reference Guides](#reference-guides)
• [Best Practices](#best-practices)

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:

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