Custom developer tools

Document updated on Nov 2, 2018

There are some additional resources that might help you when developing with KrakenD. These tools are meant to be used only in development and never in production, they are not bundled with KrakenD and are separate components that you must compile.

Hot reload the configuration

There is an additional KrakenD Docker image using Reflex to watch the configuration directory and reload KrakenD when there are changes. This is very convenient while you are developing as it allows you to test new changes without having to restart manually and making the process less tedious.

You can use the Docker image docker pull devopsfaith/krakend:watch

More information in our blog post

Generating an image with the configuration

The config2dot is a tool to create graphs automatically after reading your configuration file krakend.json. For instance:

Debugging the activity

krakend-memviz

Adds a DOT file exporter of request/response snapshots to your proxy stack for debug and development purposes. Do not use this in production as it will kill your performance.

krakend-spew

Dumps every entity seen in the pipe: requests and responses passing through thew whole stack. Do not use this in production as it will kill your performance.

Dumps are stored in files like <pipe>_<base64_endpoint/backend_name>_<timestamp>.txt. E.g:

$ ls
2,0K 25 sep 19:12 backend_L3VzZXJzL3t7Lk5pY2t9fQ==_1537895547814979000.txt
1,8K 25 sep 19:12 backend_LzIuMC91c2Vycy97ey5OaWNrfX0=_1537895547800941000.txt
92K 25 sep 19:12 client_aHR0cHM6Ly9hcGkuYml0YnVja2V0Lm9yZy8yLjAvdXNlcnMva3BhY2hh_1537895547798571000.txt
92K 25 sep 19:12 client_aHR0cHM6Ly9hcGkuYml0YnVja2V0Lm9yZy8yLjAvdXNlcnMva3BhY2hh_1537895547800824000.txt
104K 25 sep 19:12 client_aHR0cHM6Ly9hcGkuZ2l0aHViLmNvbS91c2Vycy9rcGFjaGE=_1537895547814647000.txt
1,9K 25 sep 19:12 client_basic_aHR0cHM6Ly9hcGkuYml0YnVja2V0Lm9yZy8yLjAvdXNlcnMva3BhY2hh_1537895547796264000.txt
1,9K 25 sep 19:12 client_basic_aHR0cHM6Ly9hcGkuYml0YnVja2V0Lm9yZy8yLjAvdXNlcnMva3BhY2hh_1537895547798755000.txt
2,7K 25 sep 19:12 client_basic_aHR0cHM6Ly9hcGkuZ2l0aHViLmNvbS91c2Vycy9rcGFjaGE=_1537895547812621000.txt
2,3K 25 sep 19:12 proxy_L25pY2svOm5pY2s=_1537895547815244000.txt
66K 25 sep 19:12 router_L25pY2sva3BhY2hh_1537895547816402000.txt