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Kong v0.14.0 Release Notes

Release Date: 2018-07-05 // almost 6 years ago

  • 🔌 This release introduces the first version of the Plugin Development Kit: a Lua SDK, comprised of a set of functions to ease the development of 🔌 custom plugins.

    ➕ Additionally, it contains several major improvements consolidating Kong's 🔋 feature set and flexibility, such as the support for PUT endpoints on the 🔌 Admin API for idempotent workflows, the execution of plugins during Nginx-produced errors, and the injection of Nginx directives without having 🔧 to rely on the custom Nginx configuration pattern!

    🔌 Finally, new bundled plugins allow Kong to better integrate with Cloud Native environments, such as Zipkin and Prometheus.

    ⬆️ As usual, major version upgrades require database migrations and changes to the 🔧 Nginx configuration file (if you customized the default template). Please take ⬆️ a few minutes to read the 0.14 Upgrade ⬆️ Path for more details regarding breaking changes and migrations before planning to ⬆️ upgrade your Kong cluster.

    💥 Breaking Changes

    Dependencies
    • ⚠ :warning: The required OpenResty version has been bumped to 1.13.6.2. If you are installing Kong from one of our distribution packages, you are not affected by this change. #3498
    • 🗄 :warning: Support for PostgreSQL 9.4 (deprecated in 0.12.0) is now dropped. #3490
    • 🗄 :warning: Support for Cassandra 2.1 (deprecated in 0.12.0) is now dropped. #3490
    🔧 Configuration
    • 🚤 :warning: The server_tokens and latency_tokens configuration properties have been removed. Instead, a new headers configuration properties replaces them and allows for more granular settings of injected headers (e.g. Server, Via, X-Kong-*-Latency, etc...). #3300
    • :warning: New required lua_shared_dict entries must be added to the Nginx configuration. You are not affected by this change if you do not use a custom Nginx template. #3557
    • ⚠ :warning: Other important modifications must be applied to the Nginx configuration. You are not affected by this change if you do not use a custom Nginx template. #3533
    🔌 Plugins
    • ⚠ :warning: The Runscope plugin has been dropped, based on the EoL announcement made by Runscope about their Traffic Inspector product. #3495
    Admin API
    • 🚚 :warning: The SSL Certificates and SNI entities have moved to the new DAO implementation. As such, the /certificates and /snis endpoints have received notable usability improvements, but suffer from a few breaking changes. #3386
    • 🚚 :warning: The Consumers entity has moved to the new DAO implementation. As such, the /consumers endpoint has received notable usability improvements, but suffers from a few breaking changes. #3437

    🔄 Changes

    🔧 Configuration
    • The default value of db_cache_ttl is now 0 (disabled). Now that our level of confidence around the new caching mechanism introduced in 0.11.0 is high enough, we consider 0 (no TTL) to be an appropriate default for production environments, as it offers a smoother cache consumption behavior and reduces database pressure. #3492
    Core
    • :fireworks: Serve stale data from the database cache when the datastore cannot be reached. Such stale items are "resurrected" for db_resurrect_ttl seconds (see configuration section). #3579
    • ⬇️ Reduce LRU churning in the database cache against some workloads. #3550

    ➕ Additions

    🔧 Configuration
    • 🔧 :fireworks: Support for injecting Nginx directives via configuration properties (in the kong.conf file or via environment variables)! This new way of customizing the Nginx configuration should render obsolete the old way of maintaining a custom Nginx template in most cases! #3530
    • 👌 :fireworks: Support for selectively disabling bundled plugins. A new plugins configuration property is introduced, and is used to specify which plugins should be loaded by the node. Custom plugins should now be specified in this new property, and the custom_plugins property is deprecated. If desired, Kong administrators can specify a minimal set of plugins to load (instead of the default, bundled plugins), and improve P99 latency thanks to the resulting decrease in database traffic. #3387
    • 🔧 The new headers configuration property allows for specifying the injection of a new header: X-Kong-Upstream-Status. When enabled, Kong will inject this header containing the HTTP status code of the upstream response in the client response. This is particularly useful for clients to distinguish upstream statuses upon rewriting of the response by Kong. #3263
    • A new db_resurrect_ttl configuration property can be set to customize the amount of time stale data can be resurrected for when it cannot be refreshed. Defaults to 30 seconds. #3579
    • Two new Cassandra load balancing policies are available: RequestRoundRobin and RequestDCAwareRoundRobin. Both policies guarantee that the same peer will be reused across several queries during the lifetime of a request, thus guaranteeing no new connection will be opened against a peer during this request. #3545
    Core
    • 🔌 :fireworks: Execute plugins on Nginx-produced errors. Now, when Nginx produces a 4xx error (upon invalid requests) or 5xx (upon failure from the load balancer to connect to a Service), Kong will execute the response phases of its plugins (header_filter, body_filter, log). As such, Kong logging plugins are not blind to such Nginx-produced errors anymore, and will start properly reporting them. Plugins should be built defensively against cases where their rewrite or access phases were not executed. #3533
    • 👌 :fireworks: Support for cookie-based load balancing! #3472
    🔌 Plugins
    • 🔌 :fireworks: Introduction of the Plugin Development Kit! A set of Lua functions and variables that will greatly ease and speed up the task of developing custom plugins. The Plugin Development Kit (PDK) allows the retrieval and manipulation of the request and response objects, as well as interacting with various core components (e.g. logging, load balancing, DAO, etc...) without having to rely on OpenResty functions, and with the guarantee of their forward-compatibility with future versions of Kong. #3556
    • 🆕 :fireworks: New bundled plugin: Zipkin! This plugin allows Kong to sample traces and report them to a running Zipkin instance. (See: https://github.com/Kong/kong-plugin-zipkin) #3434
    • 🆕 :fireworks: New bundled plugin: Prometheus! This plugin allows Kong to expose metrics in the Prometheus Exposition format. Available metrics include HTTP status codes, latencies histogram, bandwidth, and more... (See: https://github.com/Kong/kong-plugin-prometheus) #3547
    • 🆕 :fireworks: New bundled plugin: Azure Functions! This plugin can be used to invoke Microsoft Azure Functions, similarly to the already existing AWS Lambda and OpenWhisk plugins. (See: https://github.com/Kong/kong-plugin-azure-functions) #3428
    • 🆕 :fireworks: New bundled plugin: Serverless Functions! Dynamically run Lua without having to write a full-fledged plugin. Lua code snippets can be uploaded via the Admin API and be executed during Kong's access phase. (See: https://github.com/Kong/kong-plugin-serverless-functions) #3551
    • 👍 jwt: Support for limiting the allowed expiration period of JWT tokens. A new config.maximum_expiration property can be set to indicate the maximum number of seconds the exp claim may be ahead in the future. Thanks @mvanholsteijn for the patch! #3331
    • aws-lambda: Add us-gov-west-1 to the list of allowed regions. #3529
    Admin API
    • 👍 :fireworks: Support for PUT in new endpoints (e.g. /services/{id or name}, /routes/{id}, /consumers/{id or username}), allowing the development of idempotent configuration workflows when scripting the Admin API. #3416
    • 👌 Support for PATCH and DELETE on the /services/{name}, /consumers/{username}, and /snis/{name} endpoints. #3416

    🛠 Fixes

    🔧 Configuration
    • Properly support IPv6 addresses in proxy_listen and admin_listen configuration properties. #3508
    Core
    • IPv6 nameservers with a scope are now ignored by the DNS resolver. #3478
    • 0️⃣ SRV records without a port number now returns the default port instead of 0. #3478
    • Ensure DNS-based round robin load balancing starts at a randomized position to prevent all Nginx workers from starting with the same peer. #3478
    • Properly report timeouts in passive health checks. Previously, connection timeouts were counted as tcp_failures, and upstream timeouts were ignored. Health check users should ensure that their timeout settings reflect their intended behavior. #3539
    • Ensure active health check probe requests send the Host header. #3496
    • Overall, more reliable health checks healthiness counters behavior. #3496
    • Do not set Content-Type headers on HTTP 204 No Content responses. #3351
    • Ensure the PostgreSQL connector of the new DAO (used by Services, Routes, Consumers, and SSL certs/SNIs) is now fully re-entrant and properly behaves in busy workloads (e.g. scripting requests to the Admin API). #3423
    • Properly route HTTP/1.0 requests without a Host header when using the old deprecated "API" entity. #3438
    • 🔧 Ensure that all Kong-produced errors respect the headers configuration setting (previously server_tokens) and do not include the Server header if not configured. #3511
    • Harden an existing Cassandra migration. #3532
    • Prevent the load balancer from needlessly rebuilding its state when creating Targets. #3477
    • 🔊 Prevent some harmless error logs to be printed during startup when initialization takes more than a few seconds. #3443
    🔌 Plugins
    • hmac: Ensure that empty request bodies do not pass validation if there is no digest header. Thanks @mvanholsteijn for the patch! #3347
    • 🔌 response-transformer: Prevent the plugin from throwing an error when its access handler did not get a chance to run (e.g. on short-circuited, unauthorized requests). #3524
    • 🔌 aws-lambda: Ensure logging plugins subsequently run when this plugin terminates. #3512
    • 🔌 request-termination: Ensure logging plugins subsequently run when this plugin terminates. #3513
    Admin API
    • Requests to /healthy and /unhealthy endpoints for upstream health checks now properly propagate the new state to other nodes of a Kong cluster. #3464
    • Do not produce an HTTP 500 error when POST-ing to /services with an empty url argument. #3452
    • Ensure foreign keys are required when creating child entities (e.g. service.id when creating a Route). Previously some rows could have an empty service_id field. #3548
    • 👍 Better type inference in new endpoints (e.g. /services, /routes, /consumers) when using application/x-www-form-urlencoded MIME type. #3416

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