Kong API Gateway Installation Guide for beginners
In this post, we will discuss the API Gateway uses and the installation of open-source KONG API Gateway.
API Gateways provides security and control over the access by sitting in front of any number of API services. KONG, Tyk, API Umbrella, Ambassador, Gravitee.io, etc., are some of the API Gateways currently available in the market. These Gateways provide services like Authentication, rate-limiting, API keys, analysis, logging, etc., to your API endpoints.
Why choosing KONG over other gateways? Because, it is most straightforward of the choices above and the community is very much alive.
The latest version of the Kong 0.14.x comes with the support of various platforms. Click here to choose. We proceed further with Installing Kong on the Ubuntu platform.
Installing kong on Ubuntu
Installation of deb file
- download the Debian file here.
- After downloading at the file location, do the following.
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install openssl libpcre3 procps perl
$ sudo dpkg -i kong-community-edition-0.14.1.zesty.all.deb
Database setup
Now, we have to set up the database. Kong supports PostgreSQL and Cassandra
Lets set up PostgreSQL for KONG with the user, database name and password.
$ sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib
Switch over to the postgres an account on your server which created at the time of installation procedure by typing:
$ sudo -i -u postgres
Type psql to access a Postgres prompt and \q to exit the prompt.
Setup USER, DATABASE with password
postgres=# CREATE USER kong; CREATE DATABASE kong OWNER kong;
postgres=# ALTER USER kong WITH PASSWORD 'password you set';
Update Kong configuration and run migrations
Generally, the Kong configuration path will be at /etc/kong/kong.conf.default
$ sudo cp /etc/kong/kong.conf.default /etc/kong/kong.conf
run the migrations job before the start
$ sudo kong migrations up -c /etc/kong/kong.conf
Error: missing password, required for connect
Run with — v (verbose) or — vv (debug) for more details
The above error might encounter if you don't update the Kong configuration file. For this, you have to do the following steps.
$ sudo nano /etc/kong/kong.confand paste the below lines
pg_user = kong
pg_password = password you set
pg_database = kong
Running Kong migrations
$ sudo kong migrations up -c /etc/kong/kong.conf
If this throws an error Error: [postgres error] could not retrieve current migrations: [postgres error] ERROR: function to_regclass(unknown) does not exist (8) , check the PostgreSQL version here.
$ sudo service postgresql status
Kong requires PostgreSQL 9.5 or later. Upgrade the older version here.
If you upgrade to PostgreSQL 9.5 or later, then you don't have to set up the database, user and password. If you install, you should set up again.
Start Kong
$ sudo kong start -c /etc/kong/kong.conf
Stop Kong
$ sudo kong stop #To stop the Kong
The final step to make sure the installation and setup process succeeded is:
$ curl -i http://localhost:8001/ or http://localhost:8001/ in the browser
That’s the end of the Kong setup.
Comment below if you encounter any problems during installation.
The next tutorial is working with Key Authentication and Rate-Limiting plugins of Kong on Flask API.
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