decK

Manage Kong Konnect, Kong Gateway, and Kong Ingress Controller configuration declaratively

decK is a command line tool that lets you orchestrate and automate the entire API delivery process. It is a key part of API Lifecycle Automation (APIOps), including configuring Kong Gateway from an existing OpenAPI specification.

decK operates on state files, which represent the intended configuration of Kong Gateway in text format. You can configure any core Kong Gateway entity (for example, service, route, plugin) declaratively and apply that configuration to Kong Gateway using decK.

decK commands

decK offers a comprehensive suite of tools for configuring and managing the Kong platform through sets of commands. The decK commands are structured into three main categories:

Configuration Generation: This category focuses on the initial creation of decK state files from industry-standard API specification formats.
Configuration Transformation: This set of commands provides the tools needed to refine and restructure decK configuration files. It allows for the segmentation of a full configuration into smaller, manageable parts and their subsequent reassembly.
Gateway State Management: This category includes commands that facilitate the synchronization of the final decK file with the target platform, which can be Kong Konnect, Kong Gateway, or Kong Ingress Controller.

Declarative configuration

Kong Gateway has historically offered two declarative configuration formats, deck and dbless. The dbless format is an internal format used by kong config db_export and Kong Ingress Controller.

The deck format is the canonical declarative configuration format in this documentation. When the words “declarative configuration” are used, they refer to a deck format file, not a dbless format.

For more information, see the FAQ.