Install Kong Gateway on macOS

Kong Gateway (OSS) is licensed under an Apache 2.0 license.

Prerequisites

You have root-equivalent access.

Download and install

Install Kong Gateway:

Use the Homebrew package manager to add Kong as a tap and install it:

  1. brew tap kong/kong
  2. brew install kong

Prepare your configs

Kong can run either with or without a database.

When using a database, you will use the kong.conf configuration file for setting Kong’s configuration properties at start-up and the database as storage of all configured entities, such as the Routes and Services to which Kong proxies.

When not using a database, you will use kong.conf’s configuration properties and a kong.yml file for specifying the entities as a declarative configuration.

Using a database

We don’t recommend using Cassandra with Kong Gateway, because support for Cassandra is deprecated and planned to be removed.

Configure Kong so it can connect to your database. Kong supports PostgreSQL and Cassandra as datastores, and can also run in DB-less mode

  1. If you are using Postgres, provision a database and a user before starting Kong:

    1. CREATE USER kong; CREATE DATABASE kong OWNER kong;
  2. Run the Kong migrations:

    1. kong migrations bootstrap [-c /path/to/kong.conf]

    By default, Kong is configured to communicate with a local PostgreSQL instance. If you are using Cassandra, or need to modify any settings, download the kong.conf.default file and adjust it as necessary.

  3. As root, add kong.conf.default to /etc:

    1. sudo mkdir -p /etc/kong
    2. sudo cp kong.conf.default /etc/kong/kong.conf

Without a database

If you are going to run Kong in DB-less mode, you should start by generating a declarative config file.

  1. Generate a kong.yml file in your current folder using the following command:

    1. kong config init

    The file contains instructions about how to populate it.

  2. Edit your kong.conf file. Set the database option to off and the declarative_config option to the path of your kong.yml file:

    1. database = off
    2. declarative_config = /path/to/kong.yml

Run Kong Gateway

  1. Start Kong Gateway:

    1. kong start [-c /path/to/kong.conf]
  2. Verify that Kong Gateway is running:

    1. curl -i http://localhost:8001/

Next steps

Check out Kong Gateway’s series of Getting Started guides to get the most out of Kong Gateway.