Configuring a Router

You can configure a router in multiple ways. Because cloud-hosted and self-hosted routers share the common foundation of Apollo Router Core, all routers support declarative configuration with a YAML file, usually named router.yaml. Differences between configuring cloud-hosted and self-hosted routers:

• A cloud-hosted router is managed by Apollo and fully integrated with GraphOS, so its configuration is provided via the GraphOS Studio IDE.

• A self-hosted router is launched via command line, so its configuration includes command-line options and environment variables.

YAML file-based configuration

Both cloud-hosted and self-hosted routers support YAML file-based configuration. You can edit a YAML file named router.yaml to declaratively configure your router.

• For cloud-hosted routers, use GraphOS Studio to edit router.yaml.

• For self-hosted routers, edit a local router.yaml and run your router with the --config flag:

  Bash

  copy

  1./router --config router.yaml

To learn more about router configuration options, go to router configuration reference docs.

Configuring a self-hosted router

You provide the configuration for a self-hosted router when you run a router binary or deploy a router image.

From a command line, the router accepts configuration flags and environment variables.

The --config flag sets a path to a YAML configuration file. Use this flag to customize non-default settings for your router.

1./router --config router.yaml

GraphOS Routers must set the following environment variables so that they can fetch their supergraph schemas from GraphOS:

• APOLLO_KEY sets the graph API key to use for authenticating with GraphOS

• APOLLO_GRAPH_REF sets the graph ref of the graph and variant in GraphOS

You can run your router from the command line with these environment variables:

1APOLLO_KEY="..." APOLLO_GRAPH_REF="..." ./router

To learn more about configuration options available to self-hosted routers, go to router configuration reference docs.

Configuring a cloud-hosted router

You can manage a cloud router's configuration from GraphOS Studio:

• Open Studio and go to the Cloud Router page

• In the General tab, you can view:

  • The URL of your router's GraphQL API endpoint. Every cloud router URL is on a subdomain of apollographos.net

  • Your router's status and launch history

In the Configuration tab, you can manage:

• Secrets

• Your router's YAML-base configuration

  • A router on the Serverless plan has the following options available:

    • HTTP headers

    • CORS rules

    • Subgraph error inclusion

    • Introspection

Next steps

Browse this section to learn how to configure various features of the router:

• Real-Time Operations sets up a router to support various real-time operations

• Security protects a router from malicious or malformed requests and operations

• Performance and Scaling optimize a router's response latency and throughput

• Router Customization can add custom functionality to a router with scripts and coprocessors that can hook into a router's request-handling pipeline.

Haven't run a router with GraphOS yet? Try the quickstart

Learn more about configuration options available to cloud-hosted routers, go to router configuration reference docs.