Key Authentication

An API gateway's primary role is to connect API consumers and providers. For security reasons, it should authenticate and authorize consumers before access to internal resources.

APISIX has a flexible plugin extension system and a number of existing plugins for user authentication and authorization. For example:

• Key Authentication
• Basic Authentication
• JSON Web Token (JWT) Authentication
• Keycloak
• Casdoor
• Wolf RBAC
• OpenID Connect
• Central Authentication Service (CAS)
• HMAC
• Casbin
• LDAP
• Open Policy Agent (OPA)
• Forward Authentication

In this tutorial, you will create a consumer with key authentication, and learn how to enable and disable key authentication.

What Is a Consumer

A consumer is an application or a developer who consumes the API.

In APISIX, a consumer requires a unique username to be created. As part of the key authentication configuration, you would also add one of the authentication plugins from the list above to the consumer's plugin field.

What Is Key Authentication

Key authentication is a relatively simple but widely used authentication approach. The idea is as follows:

1. Administrator adds an authentication key (API key) to the Route.
2. API consumers add the key to the query string or headers for authentication when sending requests.

Enable Key Authentication

Prerequisite(s)

1. Complete Get APISIX to install APISIX.
2. Complete Configure Routes.

Create a Consumer

Create a consumer named tom and enable the key-auth plugin with an API key secret-key. All requests sent with the key secret-key should be authenticated as tom.

caution

Please use a complex key in the Production environment.

curl -i "http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/consumers" -X PUT -d '
{
  "username": "tom",
  "plugins": {
    "key-auth": {
      "key": "secret-key"
    }
  }
}'

You will receive an HTTP/1.1 201 Created response if the consumer was created successfully.

Enable Authentication

Re-using the same route getting-started-ip from Configure Routes, you can use the PATCH method to add the key-auth plugin to the route:

curl -i "http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/getting-started-ip" -X PATCH -d '
{
  "plugins": {
    "key-auth": {}
  }
}'

You will receive an HTTP/1.1 200 OK response if the plugin was added successfully.

Validate

Validate if authentication is successfully enabled in the following steps.

1. Send a request without any key

Send a request without the apikey header.

curl -i "http://127.0.0.1:9080/ip"

Since the key is not provided, you will receive an unauthorized HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized response.

2. Send a request with a wrong key

Send a request with a wrong key in the apikey header.

curl -i "http://127.0.0.1:9080/ip" -H 'apikey: wrong-key'

Since the key is incorrect, you will receive an HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized response.

3. Send a request with the correct key

Send a request with the correct key in the apikey header.

curl -i "http://127.0.0.1:9080/ip" -H 'apikey: secret-key'

Since the correct key is provided, you will receive an HTTP/1.1 200 OK response.

Disable Authentication

Disable the key authentication plugin by setting the _meta.disable parameter to true.

curl "http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/getting-started-ip" -X PATCH -d '
{
  "plugins": {
    "key-auth": {
      "_meta": {
        "disable": true
      }
    }
  }
}'

Send a request without any key to validate:

curl -i "http://127.0.0.1:9080/ip"

Since key authentication is disabled, you will receive an HTTP/1.1 200 OK response.

What's Next

You have learned how to configure key authentication for a route. In the next tutorial, you will learn how to configure rate limiting.