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Introduction

If you want to set up multi-tenant API management with Tyk, follow these steps to define an OperatorContext for connecting and authenticating with a Tyk Dashboard and reference it in your API definitions for specific configurations.

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Defining OperatorContext

An OperatorContext specifies the parameters for connecting and authenticating with a Tyk Dashboard. Below is an example of how to define an OperatorContext: 
apiVersion: tyk.tyk.io/v1alpha1
kind: OperatorContext
metadata:
  name: team-alpha
  namespace: default
spec:
  env:
    # The mode of the admin api
    # ce - community edition (open source gateway)
    # pro - dashboard (requires a license)
    mode: pro
    # Org ID to use
    org: *YOUR_ORGANIZATION_ID*
    # The authorization token this will be set in x-tyk-authorization header on the
    # client while talking to the admin api
    auth: *YOUR_API_ACCESS_KEY*
    # The url to the Tyk Dashboard API
    url: http://dashboard.tyk.svc.cluster.local:3000
    # Set this to true if you want to skip tls certificate and host name verification
    # this should only be used in testing
    insecureSkipVerify: true
    # For ingress the operator creates and manages ApiDefinition resources, use this to configure
    # which ports the ApiDefinition resources managed by the ingress controller binds to.
    # Use this to override default ingress http and https port
    ingress:
      httpPort: 8000
      httpsPort: 8443
For better security, you can also replace sensitive data with values contained within a referenced secret with .spec.secretRef. In this example, API access key auth and organization ID org are not specified in the manifest. They are provided through a Kubernetes secret named tyk-operator-conf in alpha namespace. The secret contains keys TYK_AUTH and TYK_ORG which correspond to the auth and org fields respectively. 
apiVersion: tyk.tyk.io/v1alpha1
kind: OperatorContext
metadata:
  name: team-alpha
  namespace: default
spec:
  secretRef:
    name: tyk-operator-conf# Secret containing keys TYK_AUTH and TYK_ORG
    namespace: alpha
  env:
    mode: pro
    url: http://tyk.tykce-control-plane.svc.cluster.local:8001
    insecureSkipVerify: true
    ingress:
      httpPort: 8000
      httpsPort: 8443
    user_owners:
    - a1b2c3d4f5e6f7
    user_group_owners:
    - 1a2b3c4d5f6e7f
You can provide the following fields through secret as referenced by secretRef. The table shows mappings between .spec.env properties and secret .spec.data keys. If a value is configured in both the secret and OperatorContext spec.env field, the value from secret will take precedence.
Secret key.spec.env
TYK_MODEmode
TYK_URLurl
TYK_AUTHauth
TYK_ORGorg
TYK_TLS_INSECURE_SKIP_VERIFYinsecureSkipVerify
TYK_USER_OWNERS (comma separated list)user_owners
TYK_USER_GROUP_OWNERS (comma separated list)user_group_owners

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Using contextRef in API Definitions

Once an OperatorContext is defined, you can reference it in your API Definition objects using contextRef. Below is an example: 
apiVersion: tyk.tyk.io/v1alpha1
kind: ApiDefinition
metadata:
  name: httpbin
  namespace: alpha
spec:
  contextRef:
    name: team-alpha
    namespace: default
  name: httpbin
  use_keyless: true
  protocol: http
  active: true
  proxy:
    target_url: http://httpbin.org
    listen_path: /httpbin
    strip_listen_path: true
In this example, the ApiDefinition object references the team-alpha context, ensuring that the configuration is applied within the alpha organization.