curl -i "$KONNECT_PROXY_URL/anything" \
--no-progress-meter --fail-with-body
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Configure a fallback Route
Deployment Platform
Related Documentation
Tags
Related Resources
Minimum Version
Kong Gateway - 3.4
TL;DR
Configure a fallback Route using the / wildcard path to catch any potential 404s and redirect to a specific upstream service.
Prerequisites
Kong Konnect
This is a Konnect tutorial and requires a Konnect personal access token.
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Create a new personal access token by opening the Konnect PAT page and selecting Generate Token.
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Export your token to an environment variable:
export KONNECT_TOKEN='YOUR_KONNECT_PAT'Copied! -
Run the quickstart script to automatically provision a Control Plane and Data Plane, and configure your environment:
curl -Ls https://get.konghq.com/quickstart | bash -s -- -k $KONNECT_TOKEN --deck-outputCopied!This sets up a Konnect Control Plane named
quickstart, provisions a local Data Plane, and prints out the following environment variable exports:export DECK_KONNECT_TOKEN=$KONNECT_TOKEN export DECK_KONNECT_CONTROL_PLANE_NAME=quickstart export KONNECT_CONTROL_PLANE_URL=https://us.api.konghq.com export KONNECT_PROXY_URL='http://localhost:8000'Copied!Copy and paste these into your terminal to configure your session.
Kong Gateway running
This tutorial requires Kong Gateway Enterprise. If you don’t have Kong Gateway set up yet, you can use the quickstart script with an enterprise license to get an instance of Kong Gateway running almost instantly.
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Export your license to an environment variable:
export KONG_LICENSE_DATA='LICENSE-CONTENTS-GO-HERE'Copied! -
Run the quickstart script:
curl -Ls https://get.konghq.com/quickstart | bash -s -- -e KONG_LICENSE_DATACopied!Once Kong Gateway is ready, you will see the following message:
Kong Gateway Ready
decK v1.43+
decK is a CLI tool for managing Kong Gateway declaratively with state files. To complete this tutorial, install decK version 1.43 or later.
This guide uses deck gateway apply, which directly applies entity configuration to your Gateway instance.
We recommend upgrading your decK installation to take advantage of this tool.
You can check your current decK version with deck version.
Required entities
For this tutorial, you’ll need Kong Gateway entities, like Gateway Services and Routes, pre-configured. These entities are essential for Kong Gateway to function but installing them isn’t the focus of this guide. Follow these steps to pre-configure them:
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Run the following command:
echo ' _format_version: "3.0" services: - name: example-service url: http://httpbin.konghq.com/anything routes: - name: example-route paths: - "/anything" service: name: example-service ' | deck gateway apply -Copied!
To learn more about entities, you can read our entities documentation.
Validate existing routing rules
In the prerequisites, you configured a Gateway Service and a Route.
Let’s check that the Route works by accessing httpbin’s /anything Service, which will echo back the request:
curl -i "http://localhost:8000/anything" \
--no-progress-meter --fail-with-body
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You should get a 200 response back.
Now try to access the same proxy URL, but at the root path (/):
curl -i "$KONNECT_PROXY_URL/" \
--no-progress-meter --fail-with-body
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curl -i "http://localhost:8000/" \
--no-progress-meter --fail-with-body
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The request will fail with the message no Route matched with those values.
Create a fallback Gateway Service and Route
To avoid 404 errors, create a fallback Gateway Service and a Route with the path /.
Together, they’ll catch any paths that don’t match other routing rules and redirect them to the Gateway Service URL.
Based on routing priority rules, this Route has the lowest priority and is evaluated after all other Routes because it’s the shortest and covers the broadest range of possible paths.
echo '
_format_version: "3.0"
services:
- name: fallback_service
url: http://httpbun.com
routes:
- name: fallback_route
service:
name: fallback_service
paths:
- "/"
' | deck gateway apply -
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Since all URIs are prefixed by the root character /,
if incoming HTTP requests match no other existing Routes, they will match this Route and redirect to the http://httpbun.com Gateway Service URL.
Validate the fallback Route
Try accessing the / path again:
curl -i "$KONNECT_PROXY_URL/" \
--no-progress-meter --fail-with-body
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curl -i "http://localhost:8000/" \
--no-progress-meter --fail-with-body
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This time, the request passes with a 302, and the request is redirected to the fallback Service URL.
You should see the header Location: https://httpbun.com/ in the response.
Cleanup
Clean up Konnect environment
If you created a new control plane and want to conserve your free trial credits or avoid unnecessary charges, delete the new control plane used in this tutorial.
Destroy the Kong Gateway container
curl -Ls https://get.konghq.com/quickstart | bash -s -- -d
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FAQs
When should I use the Route entity for fallback routing, and when should I set up redirects with the Redirect plugin instead?
The fallback routing method has limited flexibility. It’s most useful as a blanket rule.
The Redirect plugin gives you more control over your redirect rules. You can apply the Redirect plugin to any Gateway Service, Route, Consumer, or Consumer Group, as well as globally, and you can decide whether the incoming request path remains the same, while still redirecting to a different location.