Quick Start | Lunar Docs (2024)

Ready to optimize your API Consumption with Lunar.dev? Get started in just four easy steps:

1. Sign up for a Lunar.dev account (it’s free!)
2. Install the Lunar Proxy and Lunar Interceptor
3. Access and observe your third-party API consumption through the Lunar Control Plane
4. Apply a Lunar plugin to streamline and enhance your API usage

Step 1: Sign up for Lunar.dev account​

Use this link to sign up for a Lunar.dev account and click “Sign Up”. This will take you to the Lunar Control Plane, the Lunar.dev GUI interface.

Once you’ve created an account, you’ll be shown an empty dashboard and prompted to install the necessary pieces of the Lunar architecture.

Step 2: Install the Lunar Proxy and a Lunar Interceptor​

Begin by clicking the “Continue” button to pull up step-by-step instructions on installing the Lunar Proxy.

Once the proxy is installed, the next step is installing an Interceptor. Click the “Continue” button again to pull step-by-step instructions for that process. There are several ways to have your API traffic intercepted and sent to the Control Plane. Choose the installation option and language that makes the most sense for your software environment.

Send API consumption data to the Control Plane​

Once you have installed the Lunar Proxy and a Lunar Interceptor, you have configured your application to send information about your API calls to the Control Plane. From here, send some third party API requests from your application in order to trigger the data that will be sent to the Lunar Control Plane.

Step 3: Monitor and Observe your API Consumption data​

Once your data starts to flow into the Control Plane, you can see high level metrics for our API Consumption at the top of the dashboard. Sort API providers by total endpoints, total API calls, error rate, or average run time. Click on an API provider to drill down into specific endpoint level data for further visibility

Interact with your application by making a few requests. Your API requests data should automatically appear in the Control Plane dashboard!

Step 4: View and configure plugins/policies​

Navigate to the plugin/policies tab to see all available plugins and policies. To access more detailed information about a plugin, simply click on its preview tile. This action will open a tab on the right side of the GUI, providing comprehensive details about the selected plugin as well as detailed instructions for applying it.

Alternatively, if you do not want to leverage the Lunar Control Plane, you can install the Lunar architecture without the UI by following the steps below.

Lunar Proxy Installation​

docker run -d --rm -p 8000:8000 -p 8081:8081 -p 8040:8040 -e TENANT_NAME="ORGANIZATION" -v $(pwd):/etc/lunar-proxy --name lunar-proxy lunarapi/lunar-proxy:latest

curl http://localhost:8040/healthcheck

curl http://localhost:8000/fact -H "x-lunar-host: catfact.ninja" -H "x-lunar-scheme: https"

docker exec lunar-proxy discover

Lunar Interceptor Installation​

pip3 install --upgrade lunar-interceptor

export LUNAR_PROXY_HOST="localhost:8000"

import lunar_interceptor
# imports ...

# your code
def main():

Step 4: Run Your App and Validate Proxy/Interceptor Linkage​

Run your app and consume API traffic. Then, use the Discover command to validate that the requests were passed through Lunar Proxy, and that your installed interceptor is correctly listed.

docker exec lunar-proxy discover 

Configuration​

Configure the policies.yaml file​

After confirming successful installations of Lunar Interceptor and Lunar Proxy, enhance your API consumption with a remedy plugin. Think of it as a customizable tool that simplifies problem-solving and smoothens API interactions by establishing rules for different scenarios.

In this example, we'll apply the strategy-based-throttling plugin. Edit your policies.yaml file from step two with the provided plugin configuration.

global:
 remedies:
 - name: Strategy Based Throttling Quick Start
 enabled: true
 config:
 strategy_based_throttling:
 allowed_request_count: 100
 window_size_in_seconds: 60
 response_status_code: 429

In the above example, the plugin will enforce a limit of 100 requests per minute for all requests. If the limit is exceeded, the plugin will return a 429 HTTP status code.

Allowed and Blocked Domains Configuration​

You can control which domains are allowed or blocked using the optional allowed_domains or blocked_domains configurations in your policies.yaml file. This feature also supports regex implementations, *example.com - would allow dev.example.com and help.example.com.

Usage​

• If allowed_domains is not defined: All domains are allowed.
• If allowed_domains is defined: Any domain not matching the values in allowed_domains will be blocked.
• If blocked_domains is not defined: No domains are blocked.

Example Configuration​

allowed_domains:
 - "api.io"

blocked_domains:
 - "comp.io"

global: 
 remedies:
 - name: Strategy Based Throttling Quick Start
 enabled: true
 config:
 strategy_based_throttling:
 allowed_request_count: 6
 window_size_in_seconds: 60
 response_status_code: 429
 
#### Apply Policy

After making changes to your local `policies.yaml` file, use the `apply_policies` command to apply the new policies. 

```bash
docker exec lunar-proxy apply_policies

What's Next?​

• Lunar Sandbox: Try out Lunar in the interactive sandbox - no installation required!
• Demo video: Check out this demo video for a quick start.
• Download Example App: Explore Lunar in action with our example apps, already configured to work with Lunar Proxy.
• Get in touch: For any questions, feel free to reach out to us at info@lunar.dev.