With the Portal custom resource, you tie together the backend resources that serve the developer portal. These resources include portal settings, usage plans, API products, and more.

About the backend and frontend portals

As you set up a developer portal, you can think about two main parts to configure:

  • Backend portal: As part of the Gloo Mesh Gateway installation, Gloo set up a portal server. You can configure this backend portal to expose the Gloo Portal OpenAPI as well as the Portal custom resources that describe each developer portal that you create.
  • Frontend portal: The frontend portal is a user-facing application that renders the information about the APIs that the portal server exposes in a developer portal. This way, your users can interact with a graphical user interface to view, authenticate to, and use your API products. For more information, see the Deploy a frontend app guide.

Prepare the backend portal configuration

The Portal custom resource selects the API products and usage plans that you want to expose in the developer portal.

Step 1: Add API products

Decide on the API products that you want your developer portal to serve. To determine the API products that are included in a portal, you specify an API product label selector in your portal resource.

  1. Decide on a label that you want to use to select the API products that you want to include in your developer portal. For example, your label might be portal: dev-portal.

  2. Add the label to the spec.apis section in your portal resource. When you create the portal resource, all API products with this label are retrieved and the corresponding APIs are stitched together in a combined schema.

      apiVersion: apimanagement.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: Portal
metadata:
  name: developer-portal
  namespace: gloo-mesh
spec:
  visibility:
    public: true
    privateAPILabels:
      portal-visibility: private
  domains:
    - "developer.example.com"
  portalBackendSelectors:
    - selector:
        labels:
          app: gloo-mesh-portal-server
  usagePlans:
     - name: bronze
       displayName: "Bronze Plan"
       description: "A basic usage plan"
     - name: silver
       description: "A better usage plan"
     - name: gold
       description: "The best usage plan!"
  apis:
    - labels:
        portal: dev-portal

  3. Decide on the API products that you want to include in your portal and add the label to the route table that represents each API product. The following example adds the label to the tracks and petstore API products.

      kubectl apply -f - << EOF
apiVersion: networking.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: RouteTable
metadata:
  name: tracks-rt
  namespace: gloo-mesh-gateways
  labels:
     portal: dev-portal
     api: tracks
spec:
  http:
  - name: tracks-api
    labels:
      usagePlans: dev-portal
    matchers:
    - uri:
        prefix: /
    forwardTo:
      pathRewrite: /
      destinations:
      - ref:
          name: tracks-rest-api
          namespace: tracks
        port:
          number: 5000
  portalMetadata:
    apiProductId: "tracks"
    apiProductDisplayName: "Catstronauts Course Tracks"
    apiVersion: "v1"
    title: "Catstronauts REST API"
    description: "REST API for Catstronauts to retrieve data for tracks, authors and modules."
    termsOfService: "You must authenticate to use this API! And other Terms of Service."
    contact: "support@example.com"
    license: "License info, such as MIT"
    lifecycle: "Supported"
    customMetadata:
      compatibility: "None"
EOF
  
      kubectl apply -f - << EOF
apiVersion: networking.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: RouteTable
metadata:
  name: petstore-rt
  namespace: gloo-mesh-gateways
  labels:
    portal: dev-portal
    api: petstore
spec:
  http:
  - name: pets-api
    matchers:
    - uri:
        prefix: /pet
    forwardTo:
      destinations:
      - ref:
          name: pets-rest-api
          namespace: pets
        port:
          number: 5000
  - name: users-api
    matchers:
    - uri:
        prefix: /user
    forwardTo:
      destinations:
      - ref:
          name: users-rest-api
          namespace: users
        port:
          number: 5000
  - name: store-api
    matchers:
    - uri:
        prefix: /store
    forwardTo:
      destinations:
      - ref:
          name: store-rest-api
          namespace: store
        port:
          number: 5000
  portalMetadata:
    apiProductId: "petstore"
    apiProductDisplayName: "Pet Store"
    apiId: "petstore-v1"
    apiVersion: "v1"
    title: "Pet Store REST API"
    description: "Totally awesome API for all things pets!"
    termsOfService: "You must authenticate to use this API! And other Terms of Service."
    contact: "support@example.com"
    license: "License info, such as MIT"
    lifecycle: "Supported"
    customMetadata:
      compatibility: "None"
EOF

Step 2: Set the visibility of API products

For the API products that the developer portal serves, you can decide whether the API product is visible to all users (public APIs) or if the API product is hidden until the user is successfully authenticated and authorized (private APIs).

Click through the following tabs to learn more about the visibility options that are available to you and the resources you need to configure to implement this option.

By default, the portal’s visibility is set to private, which means that all the API products that the portal serves are hidden to the user, until the user is properly authenticated with an OIDC provider and authorized with a portal group.

If you decide to keep all of your API products private, no additional setup in the portal resource or API product is required. However, you must follow the steps to add external authentication with an OIDC provider and authorize users with portal groups.

A public portal does not require authentication for the API products that the portal serves. Any user who accesses the developer portal can view the APIs of the API product. To change the visibility for all API products that the portal serves to public, set the spec.visibility.public value in your portal resource to true as shown in the following example.

  kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
apiVersion: apimanagement.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: Portal
metadata:
  name: developer-portal
  namespace: gloo-mesh
spec:
  visibility:
    public: true
  domains:
    - "developer.example.com"
  portalBackendSelectors:
    - selector:
        labels:
          app: gloo-mesh-portal-server
  usagePlans:
    - name: bronze
      displayName: "Bronze Plan"
      description: "A basic usage plan"
    - name: silver
      description: "A better usage plan"
    - name: gold
      description: "The best usage plan!"
  apis:
    - labels:
        portal: dev-portal
EOF

You can choose to set the visibility for your portal to public and select specific API products that you want to hide until the user is properly authenticated and authorized. With this approach, unauthorized users can see only the APIs of public API products. Private APIs are hidden.

  1. Decide on a label that you want to use to mark an API product private. For example, your label might be portal-visibility: private.

  2. In your portal resource, configure the spec.visibility with both public and private settings. Set the overall visibility to public: true. Then, add the label that you want to use to mark API products as private in the privateAPILabels section.

      kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
apiVersion: apimanagement.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: Portal
metadata:
  name: developer-portal
  namespace: gloo-mesh
spec:
  visibility:
    public: true
    privateAPILabels:
      portal-visibility: private
  domains:
    - "developer.example.com"
  portalBackendSelectors:
    - selector:
        labels:
          app: gloo-mesh-portal-server
  usagePlans:
    - name: bronze
      displayName: "Bronze Plan"
      description: "A basic usage plan"
    - name: silver
      description: "A better usage plan"
    - name: gold
      description: "The best usage plan!"
  apis:
    - labels:
        portal: dev-portal
EOF

  3. Add the label to any API product that you want to mark private. In this example, the portal-visibility: private label is added to the route table that represents the petstore API product.

      kubectl apply -f - << EOF
apiVersion: networking.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: RouteTable
metadata:
  name: petstore-rt
  namespace: gloo-mesh-gateways
  labels:
    portal: dev-portal
    api: petstore
    portal-visibility: private
spec:
  http:
  - name: pets-api
    labels:
      usagePlans: dev-portal
    matchers:
    - uri:
        prefix: /pet
    forwardTo:
      destinations:
      - ref:
          name: pets-rest-api
          namespace: pets
        port:
          number: 5000
  - name: users-api
    labels:
      usagePlans: dev-portal
    matchers:
    - uri:
        prefix: /user
    forwardTo:
      destinations:
      - ref:
          name: users-rest-api
          namespace: users
        port:
          number: 5000
  - name: store-api
    labels:
      usagePlans: dev-portal
    matchers:
    - uri:
        prefix: /store
    forwardTo:
      destinations:
      - ref:
          name: store-rest-api
          namespace: store
        port:
          number: 5000
  portalMetadata:
    apiProductId: "petstore"
    apiProductDisplayName: "Pet Store"
    apiVersion: "v1"
    title: "Pet Store REST API"
    description: "Totally awesome API for all things pets!"
    termsOfService: "You must authenticate to use this API! And other Terms of Service."
    contact: "support@example.com"
    license: "License info, such as MIT"
    lifecycle: "Supported"
    customMetadata:
      compatibility: "None"
EOF

  4. Follow the steps to add external authentication with an OIDC provider and authorize users with portal groups.

Step 3: Add usage plans

Describe the usage plans that you want to make visible to your users in the developer portal. You might include information such as a display name and a description that you want to show to users that access the developer portal.

  1. Get the usage plans that you set up earlier. The usage plans are set in the rate limit server configuration.

      kubectl get ratelimitserverconfigs usage-plans -n gloo-mesh -o yaml

  2. Select the usage plans that you want to include in your portal. To reference a usage plan in your portal resource, you need to get the simpleDescriptors.value value. In the following example, the usage plan value is bronze.

       ...
   spec:
     destinationServers:
     - port:
         name: grpc
       ref:
         cluster: $CLUSTER_NAME
         name: rate-limiter
         namespace: gloo-mesh
     raw:
       setDescriptors:
       - rateLimit:
           requestsPerUnit: 1
           unit: MINUTE
         simpleDescriptors:
         - key: userId
         - key: usagePlan
           value: bronze

  3. Add the usage plan values to the usagePlans section of your portal resource. Make sure to enter the usage plan value that you retrieved in the previous step in the spec.usagePlans.name field. You can optionally add information, such as the display name or a description for each usage plan that is shown to users that access the developer portal. For example, you might include pricing details, rate limiting, or access instructions in the plan description.

      apiVersion: apimanagement.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: Portal
metadata:
  name: developer-portal
  namespace: gloo-mesh
spec:
  domains:
    - "developer-portal.example.com"
  portalBackendSelectors:
    - selector:
        labels:
          app: gloo-mesh-portal-server
  usagePlans:
    - name: bronze
      displayName: "Bronze Plan"
      description: "A basic usage plan"
    - name: silver
      description: "A better usage plan"
    - name: gold
      description: "The best usage plan!"
  apis:
    - labels:
        portal: dev-portal

Create a backend portal

Now that you prepared your portal configuration, you can create your developer portal and make it available to your users.

Before you begin

This guide assumes that you want to include the tracks and petstore API products in your developer portal. The tracks API is publicly available, and the petstore API is visible only if you are successfully authenticated and authorized.

  1. Deploy sample REST APIs to create ApiDocs.
  2. Bundle your APIs into API products.
  3. Prepare usage plans, which consist of external auth and rate limit policies.
  4. Prepare your developer portal configuration.

Step 1: Create a backend portal resource

Create a portal resource. The Gloo portal server uses this configuration to create a backend for a developer portal. Later, you can expose the developer portal to end users by creating a frontend app for the portal.

  1. Create a developer portal. The following portal resource creates a developer portal for the developer.example.com host and includes all API products with the portal: dev-portal label. If you followed the examples in Decide on your portal configuration, the tracks and petstore API products are served by this portal resource.

      kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
apiVersion: apimanagement.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: Portal
metadata:
  name: developer-portal
  namespace: gloo-mesh
spec:
  visibility:
    public: true
    privateAPILabels:
      portal-visibility: private
  domains:
    - "developer.example.com"
  portalBackendSelectors:
    - selector:
        labels:
          app: gloo-mesh-portal-server
  usagePlans:
    - name: bronze
      displayName: "Bronze Plan"
      description: "A basic usage plan"
    - name: silver
      description: "A better usage plan"
    - name: gold
      description: "The best usage plan!"
  apis:
    - labels:
        portal: dev-portal 
EOF

  2. Verify that the internal PortalConfig resource is created for your portal.

      kubectl get portalconfigs -n gloo-mesh -o yaml

    Example output: Notice that the stitched schema is used, as well as the portal metadata that you set in the route table.

    apiVersion: v1
items:
- apiVersion: internal.gloo.solo.io/v2
  kind: PortalConfig
  metadata:
 annotations:
   cluster.solo.io/cluster: cluster-1
 creationTimestamp: "2023-04-06T21:30:41Z"
 generation: 1
 labels:
   context.mesh.gloo.solo.io/cluster: cluster-1-portal
   context.mesh.gloo.solo.io/namespace: gloo-mesh-gateways
   context.mesh.gloo.solo.io/workspace: cluster-1-portal
   gloo.solo.io/parent_cluster: cluster-1-portal
   gloo.solo.io/parent_group: ""
   gloo.solo.io/parent_kind: Namespace
   gloo.solo.io/parent_name: gloo-mesh-gateways
   gloo.solo.io/parent_namespace: ""
   gloo.solo.io/parent_version: v1
   reconciler.mesh.gloo.solo.io/name: translator
 name: developer-portal-gloo-mesh-cluster-1-portal
 namespace: gloo-mesh
 resourceVersion: "1985686"
 uid: 59fe5508-d839-4720-b6ae-59347664e3bb
  spec:
 apis:
 - apiSchema:
     cluster: cluster-1-portal
     name: tracks-rt-stitched-openapi-cluster-1-portal-gloo-mesh-gateways-cluster-1-portal
     namespace: gloo-mesh
   contact: support@example.com
   description: REST API for Catstronauts to retrieve data for tracks, authors
  and modules.
   license: license info
   routeTable:
     cluster: cluster-1-portal
     name: tracks-rt
     namespace: gloo-mesh-gateways
   termsOfService: You must authenticate to use this API! And other Terms of Service.
   title: Catstronauts REST API
 - apiSchema:
     cluster: cluster-1-portal
     name: petstore-rt-stitched-openapi-cluster-1-portal-gloo-mesh-gateways-cluster-1-portal
     namespace: gloo-mesh
   contact: support@example.com
   description: Totally awesome API for all things pets!
   license: license info
   routeTable:
     cluster: cluster-1-portal
     name: petstore-rt
     namespace: gloo-mesh-gateways
   termsOfService: You must authenticate to use this API! And other Terms of Service.
   title: Petstore REST API
 domains:
 - developer.example.com
 portalRef:
   cluster: cluster-1-portal
   name: developer-portal
   namespace: gloo-mesh
 public: true
kind: List
metadata:
  resourceVersion: ""
  selfLink: ""

Step 2: Set up routing for the backend portal

Set up routing to the portal server. This way, you can access the backend APIs that serve the frontend developer portal, such as listing the APIs in the portal.

  1. Create a virtual gateway that you use to expose the developer portal. The following example selects the default ingress gateway that you deployed during your Gloo Platform installation. For more examples such as HTTPS/TLS, see Configure gateway listeners.

      kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
apiVersion: networking.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: VirtualGateway
metadata:
  name: istio-ingressgateway-portal
  namespace: gloo-mesh-gateways
spec:
  listeners:
    - allowedRouteTables:
        - host: developer.example.com
        - host: portal.example.com
      http: {}
      port:
        number: 80
  workloads:
    - selector:
        cluster: $CLUSTER_NAME
        labels:
          istio: ingressgateway
EOF

  2. Create a route table for the developer portal. The following route table creates routes for all the portal APIs so that you can interact with your developer portal.

      kubectl apply -f - <<EOF    
apiVersion: networking.gloo.solo.io/v2
kind: RouteTable
metadata:
  name: dev-portal-rt
  namespace: gloo-mesh-gateways
spec:
  hosts:
  - developer.example.com
  virtualGateways:
  - name: istio-ingressgateway-portal
    namespace: gloo-mesh-gateways
  defaultDestination:
    port:
      number: 8080
    ref:
      name: gloo-mesh-portal-server
      namespace: gloo-mesh
      cluster: $CLUSTER_NAME
  http:
    #
    # Portal server routes that require authentication.
    #
    - forwardTo: {}
      name: authn
      labels:
        oauth: "true" # Use this label to apply an OAuth external auth policy
        route: portal-api
      matchers:
        #
        # /v1/me
        - uri:
            prefix: /v1/me
          method: OPTIONS
        - uri:
            prefix: /v1/me
          method: GET
          headers:
            - name: Authorization
              value: "Bearer.*"
              regex: true
        #
        # /v1/apis
        - uri:
            prefix: /v1/apis
          method: GET
          headers:
            - name: Authorization
              value: "Bearer.*"
              regex: true
        #
        # /v1/usage-plans
        - uri:
            prefix: /v1/usage-plans
          method: GET
          headers:
            - name: Authorization
              value: "Bearer.*"
              regex: true
        #
        # /v1/api-keys
        - uri:
            prefix: /v1/api-keys
          method: GET
          headers:
            - name: Authorization
              value: "Bearer.*"
              regex: true
        - uri:
            prefix: /v1/api-keys
          method: POST
          headers:
            - name: Authorization
              value: "Bearer.*"
              regex: true
        - uri:
            prefix: /v1/api-keys
          method: DELETE
          headers:
            - name: Authorization
              value: "Bearer.*"
              regex: true
    #
    # Portal server routes that are public and do not require authentication.
    #
    - forwardTo: {}
      name: no-auth
      labels:
        route: portal-api
      matchers:
        - uri:
            prefix: /v1/apis
          method: GET
        - uri:
            prefix: /v1/usage-plans
          method: GET
        - uri:
            prefix: /v1/api-keys
          method: GET
        #
        # Allow OPTION requests without authentication.
        #
        - uri:
            prefix: /v1/api-keys
          method: OPTIONS
        - uri:
            prefix: /v1/usage-plans
          method: OPTIONS
        - uri:
            prefix: /v1/apis
          method: OPTIONS
EOF

Step 3: Verify the backend portal

Verify that the backend portal is set up by sending a request and reviewing its resources in the Gloo UI.

  1. Send a request to the developer portal to list the APIs that you have access to. Note that because the petstore API is set to private, only the tracks API is returned in your CLI output. To view the private petstore APIs, you must set up authentication and authorization. For more information, see Secure the portal.

      curl -vik --resolve developer.example.com:80:$INGRESS_GW_IP http://developer.example.com:80/v1/apis

    Example output:

      * Mark bundle as not supporting multiuse
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< content-type: application/json
content-type: application/json
< date: Fri, 14 Apr 2023 13:57:02 GMT
date: Fri, 14 Apr 2023 13:57:02 GMT
< content-length: 387
content-length: 387
< x-envoy-upstream-service-time: 0
x-envoy-upstream-service-time: 0
< server: istio-envoy
server: istio-envoy

< 
[{"apiProductDisplayName":"Catstronauts Course Tracks","apiProductId":"tracks","apiVersions":[{"apiId":"tracks-v1","apiVersion":"v1","contact":"support@example.com","customMetadata":{"compatibility":"None"},"description":"REST API for Catstronauts to retrieve data for tracks, authors and modules.","license":"License info, such as MIT","lifecycle":"Supported","termsOfService":"You must authenticate to use this API! And other Terms of Service.","title":"Catstronauts REST API","usagePlans":["bronze","gold","silver"]}]},{"apiProductDisplayName":"Pet Store","apiProductId":"petstore","apiVersions":[{"apiId":"petstore-v1","apiVersion":"v1","contact":"support@example.com","customMetadata":{"compatibility":"None"},"description":"Totally awesome API for all things pets!","license":"License info, such as MIT","lifecycle":"Supported","termsOfService":"You must authenticate to use this API! And other Terms of Service.","title":"Pet Store REST API","usagePlans":["bronze","gold","silver"]}]}]

* Connection #0 to host developer.example.com left intact

  2. Launch the Gloo UI.

      meshctl dashboard

  3. From the menu, click the Portals page.

    Figure: Gloo UI view of portals
    Figure: Gloo UI view of portals

  4. Click your portal and review the Published APIs and Usage Plans of the portal.

    Figure: Gloo UI detailed view of portals
    Figure: Gloo UI detailed view of portals

Next steps

You can continue to use your portal in several ways:

When you are done trying out Portal, you can clean up all of the resources that you created.