Key Authentication

Add Key Authentication (also sometimes referred to as an API key) to a Service or a Route. Consumers then add their key either in a querystring parameter or a header to authenticate their requests.

Terminology

• plugin: a plugin executing actions inside IAM before or after a request has been proxied to the upstream API.
• Service: the IAM entity representing an external upstream API or microservice.
• Route: the IAM entity representing a way to map downstream requests to upstream services.
• upstream service: this refers to your own API/service sitting behind IAM, to which client requests are forwarded.

Configuration

This plugin is compatible with requests with the following protocols:

• http
• https

This plugin is partially compatible with DB-less mode.

Enabling the plugin on a Service

With a database

Configure this plugin on a Service by making the following request:

$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8001/services/{service}/plugins \
    --data "name=key-auth" 

Without a database

Configure this plugin on a Service by adding this section do your declarative configuration file:

plugins:
- name: key-auth
  service: {service}
  config: 

In both cases, {service} is the id or name of the Service that this plugin configuration will target.

Enabling the plugin on a Route

With a database

Configure this plugin on a Route with:

$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8001/routes/{route}/plugins \
    --data "name=key-auth" 

Without a database

Configure this plugin on a Route by adding this section do your declarative configuration file:

plugins:
- name: key-auth
  route: {route}
  config: 

In both cases, {route} is the id or name of the Route that this plugin configuration will target.

Global plugins

• Using a database, all plugins can be configured using the http://localhost:8001/plugins/ endpoint.
• Without a database, all plugins can be configured via the plugins: entry on the declarative configuration file.

A plugin which is not associated to any Service, Route or Consumer (or API, if you are using an older version of IAM) is considered "global", and will be run on every request. Read the Plugin Reference and the Plugin Precedence sections for more information.

Parameters

Here's a list of all the parameters which can be used in this plugin's configuration:

Note that, according to their respective specifications, HTTP header names are treated as case insensitive, while HTTP query string parameter names are treated as case sensitive. IAM follows these specifications as designed, meaning that the key_names configuration values will be treated differently when searching the request header fields, versus searching the query string. Administrators are advised against defining case-sensitive key_names values when expecting the authorization keys to be sent in the request headers.

Once applied, any user with a valid credential can access the Service. To restrict usage to only some of the authenticated users, also add the ACL plugin (not covered here) and create whitelist or blacklist groups of users.

Usage

Create a Consumer

You need to associate a credential to an existing Consumer object. A Consumer can have many credentials.

With a Database

To create a Consumer, you can execute the following request:

curl -d "username=user123&custom_id=SOME_CUSTOM_ID" http://localhost:8001/consumers/

Without a Database

Your declarative configuration file will need to have one or more Consumers. You can create them on the consumers: yaml section:

consumers:
- username: user123
  custom_id: SOME_CUSTOM_ID

In both cases, the parameters are as described below:

If you are also using the ACL plugin and whitelists with this service, you must add the new consumer to a whitelisted group. See ACL: Associating Consumers for details.

Create a Key

With a database

You can provision new credentials by making the following HTTP request:

$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8001/consumers/{consumer}/key-auth -d ''
HTTP/1.1 201 Created

{
    "consumer": { "id": "876bf719-8f18-4ce5-cc9f-5b5af6c36007" },
    "created_at": 1443371053000,
    "id": "62a7d3b7-b995-49f9-c9c8-bac4d781fb59",
    "key": "62eb165c070a41d5c1b58d9d3d725ca1"
}

Without a database

You can add credentials on your declarative config file on the keyauth_credentials yaml entry:

keyauth_credentials:
- consumer: {consumer}

In both cases the fields/parameters work as follows:

Using the Key

Simply make a request with the key as a querystring parameter:

$ curl http://localhost:8000/{proxy path}?apikey=<some_key>

Or in a header:

$ curl http://localhost:8000/{proxy path} \
    -H 'apikey: <some_key>'

Delete a Key

You can delete an API Key by making the following HTTP request:

$ curl -X DELETE http://localhost:8001/consumers/{consumer}/key-auth/{id}
HTTP/1.1 204 No Content

• consumer: The id or username property of the Consumer entity to associate the credentials to.
• id: The id attribute of the key credential object.

Upstream Headers

When a client has been authenticated, the plugin will append some headers to the request before proxying it to the upstream service, so that you can identify the Consumer in your code:

• X-Consumer-ID, the ID of the Consumer on IAM
• X-Consumer-Custom-ID, the custom_id of the Consumer (if set)
• X-Consumer-Username, the username of the Consumer (if set)
• X-Credential-Username, the username of the Credential (only if the consumer is not the ‘anonymous' consumer)
• X-Anonymous-Consumer, will be set to true when authentication failed, and the ‘anonymous' consumer was set instead.

You can use this information on your side to implement additional logic. You can use the X-Consumer-ID value to query the IAM Admin API and retrieve more information about the Consumer.

Paginate through keys

You can paginate through the API keys for all Consumers using the following request:

$ curl -X GET http://localhost:8001/key-auths

{
   "data":[
      {
         "id":"17ab4e95-9598-424f-a99a-ffa9f413a821",
         "created_at":1507941267000,
         "key":"Qslaip2ruiwcusuSUdhXPv4SORZrfj4L",
         "consumer": { "id": "c0d92ba9-8306-482a-b60d-0cfdd2f0e880" }
      },
      {
         "id":"6cb76501-c970-4e12-97c6-3afbbba3b454",
         "created_at":1507936652000,
         "key":"nCztu5Jrz18YAWmkwOGJkQe9T8lB99l4",
         "consumer": { "id": "c0d92ba9-8306-482a-b60d-0cfdd2f0e880" }
      },
      {
         "id":"b1d87b08-7eb6-4320-8069-efd85a4a8d89",
         "created_at":1507941307000,
         "key":"26WUW1VEsmwT1ORBFsJmLHZLDNAxh09l",
         "consumer": { "id": "3c2c8fc1-7245-4fbb-b48b-e5947e1ce941" }
      }
   ]
   "next":null,
}

You can filter the list by consumer by using this other path:

$ curl -X GET http://localhost:8001/consumers/{username or id}/key-auth

{
    "data": [
       {
         "id":"6cb76501-c970-4e12-97c6-3afbbba3b454",
         "created_at":1507936652000,
         "key":"nCztu5Jrz18YAWmkwOGJkQe9T8lB99l4",
         "consumer": { "id": "c0d92ba9-8306-482a-b60d-0cfdd2f0e880" }
       }
    ]
    "next":null,
}

username or id: The username or id of the consumer whose credentials need to be listed

Retrieve the Consumer associated with a key

It is possible to retrieve a Consumer associated with an API Key using the following request:

curl -X GET http://localhost:8001/key-auths/{key or id}/consumer

{
   "created_at":1507936639000,
   "username":"foo",
   "id":"c0d92ba9-8306-482a-b60d-0cfdd2f0e880"
}

• key or id: The id or key property of the API key for which to get the associated Consumer.