Konnect Authentication | Learn kongctl

Goal

You will authenticate kongctl, verify access to your organization and any available user identity, and compare command output formats.

Prerequisites

Complete Install kongctl first. You also need a Kong Konnect account.

Choose an authentication method

Use either browser-based login or an access token.

Start the browser-based login flow:

kongctl login

Follow the terminal instructions to finish signing in.

Access token

Use either a personal access token (PAT) or a system account access token (SPAT). Set the token as an environment variable, replacing <access-token> with your token:

export KONGCTL_DEFAULT_KONNECT_PAT="<access-token>"

Verify

Check whether the authenticated identity has an associated Konnect user:

kongctl get me

Browser login and PAT authentication return user information. This command is expected to fail with a SPAT because a system account does not have a user identity.

Confirm kongctl can read your organization:

kongctl get organization

This command works with browser login, a PAT, or a SPAT.

Compare output formats

The -o flag presents the same resource in text, JSON, or YAML. Run each command and compare the results:

kongctl get organization -o text
kongctl get organization -o json
kongctl get organization -o yaml

Text is optimized for reading in a terminal. JSON and YAML preserve structured data for scripts or other tools.