How to Use the Kong Gateway Key Authentication Plugin

This tutorial will walk through a common use case for the Kong Gateway Key Authentication plugin: using API key authentication to protect a route to an API server endpoint. Install Kong Gateway.

1. Set up a Node.js Express API server with a single endpoint. (0:30)

2. Set up Kong Gateway to sit in front of an upstream service: our API server. (2:30)

3. Set up the Key Authentication plugin to protect the route by requiring a valid API key in the request header. If the user provides no key, they'll receive a 401 Unauthorized response. (7:30)

4. Use Kong to create a consumer (a valid user) and a credential (an API key). (10:30)

5. Demonstrate that a request through Kong—if it includes a valid API key—is forwarded to our API server. (11:55)

Read the full tutorial blog post.

The Kong Gateway Key Authentication Plugin provides a highly configurable API key management system that is simple to set up and quick to deploy. We’re going to see the ease and power of this plugin in our walkthrough.

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