Zilla is an event-driven API gateway that connects web and mobile applications to event-driven microservices using standard protocols, such as HTTP, Server-Sent Events and Kafka.

Zilla is designed on the fundamental principle that every data flow is a stream, and that streams can be composed together to create efficient protocol transformation pipelines. This concept of a stream holds at both the network level for communication protocols and also at the application level for data processing.

Zilla's declarative configuration defines a routed graph of protocol decoders, transformers, encoders and caches that combine to provide a secure and stateless API entry point to your event-driven architecture.

For example, when deployed in front of a Kafka cluster, Zilla can be configured to support:

• HTTP request-response interaction with Kafka-based microservices
• HTTP event-driven caching populated by messages from a Kafka topic
• reliable message streaming from a Kafka topic via Server-Sent Events
• secure HTTP request-response APIs using JWT access tokens
• secure Server-Sent Events streams using continuous authorization via JWT access tokens

As a developer, you can focus on writing and testing your event-driven microservices with technologies such as Kafka consumers and producers, you can define your web and mobile APIs using Zilla, and then you can deploy securely at global scale.

Read the docs. Try the examples. Join the Slack community.

Run the latest Zilla release with default empty configuration via docker.

docker run ghcr.io/aklivity/zilla:latest start -v

{
  "name": "default"
}
started

Configure Zilla to behave as a tcp echo server in 2mins.

First create a local zilla.json with the following contents.

{
    "name": "example",
    "bindings":
    {
        "tcp_server0":
        {
            "type" : "tcp",
            "kind": "server",
            "options":
            {
                "host": "0.0.0.0",
                "port": 12345
            },
            "exit": "echo_server0"
        },
        "echo_server0":
        {
            "type" : "echo",
            "kind": "server"
        }
    }
}

Then run Zilla again, this time mounting your local zilla.json as a docker volume file.

docker run -v `pwd`/zilla.json:/zilla.json ghcr.io/aklivity/zilla:latest start -v

Now, try it out using netcat.

nc localhost 12345

Hello, world
Hello, world

Check out the docs and examples to learn how to configure Zilla. Follow the tutorial to build a CQRS Todo app with Zilla and Kafka Streams. Ask questions in the Slack community.

Zilla is designed from the ground up to be extensible and we anticipate adding support for several new capabilities:

• gRPC, proxy and Kafka mapping
• GraphQL, proxy and Kafka mapping
• MQTT, proxy and Kafka mapping
• AMQP, proxy and Kafka mapping
• WebSocket, proxy and Kafka mapping
• WebHooks, Kafka mapping
• HTTP, proxy, including HTTP/3
• SSE, proxy (Kafka mapping done)
• OpenAPI integration
• AsyncAPI integration
• Avro integration
• OpenTelemetry integration

Please let us know in the Slack community if you have additional suggestions.

./mvnw clean install

This creates a local docker image with version develop-SNAPSHOT.

The project is licensed under the Aklivity Community License, except for selected components which are under the Apache 2.0 license. See LICENSE file in each subfolder for detailed license agreement.