Barbacane Documentation

Barbacane is a spec-driven API gateway. Define your API using OpenAPI, add Barbacane extensions for routing and middleware, compile to an artifact, and deploy.

Why Barbacane?

Spec-first: Your OpenAPI spec is the source of truth
Compile-time validation: Catch misconfigurations before deployment
Plugin architecture: Extend with WASM plugins for auth, rate limiting, transforms
Observable: Prometheus metrics, structured JSON logging, distributed tracing with OTLP export
European-made: Built in Europe, hosted on EU infrastructure

Quick Start

# Build from source (crates.io publishing planned for v1.0)
git clone https://github.com/barbacane/barbacane.git
cd barbacane && cargo build --release

# Add x-barbacane-dispatch to your OpenAPI spec
# Compile
./target/release/barbacane compile --spec api.yaml --output api.bca

# Run
./target/release/barbacane serve --artifact api.bca --listen 0.0.0.0:8080

Documentation

User Guide

Getting Started - First steps with Barbacane
Spec Configuration - Configure routing and middleware in your OpenAPI spec
Dispatchers - Route requests to backends
Middlewares - Add authentication, rate limiting, and more
Secrets - Manage secrets in plugin configurations
Observability - Metrics, logging, and distributed tracing
Control Plane - REST API for spec and artifact management
Web UI - Web-based management interface

Reference

CLI Reference - Command-line tools
Spec Extensions - Complete x-barbacane-* reference
Artifact Format - .bca file format
Reserved Endpoints - /__barbacane/* endpoints

Contributing

Architecture - System design and crate structure
Development Guide - Setting up and building
Plugin Development - Creating WASM plugins

Supported Spec Versions

Format	Version	Status
OpenAPI	3.0.x	Supported
OpenAPI	3.1.x	Supported
OpenAPI	3.2.x	Supported (draft)
AsyncAPI	3.0.x	Supported

Barbacane supports AsyncAPI 3.x for event-driven APIs. AsyncAPI send operations are accessible via HTTP POST requests, enabling a sync-to-async bridge pattern where HTTP clients can publish messages to Kafka or NATS brokers.

License

Apache 2.0 - See LICENSE

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Barbacane Documentation