apollo-router

packaged by Chainguard

Chainguard Container for apollo-router

Apollo Router is a configurable, high-performance routing runtime for Apollo Federation.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/apollo-router:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

The apollo-router Chainguard Container is comparable to the upstream Apollo Router image and can be used as a drop-in replacement.

Getting Started

The Apollo Router orchestrates queries across the subgraphs of a federated GraphQL supergraph. Before it can serve traffic it needs a composed supergraph schema, which you can provide either as a local file or via Apollo GraphOS Uplink.

Run the Router with a Local Supergraph Schema

To run the router with a local supergraph schema, point APOLLO_ROUTER_SUPERGRAPH_PATH (or the --supergraph flag) at a composed schema mounted into the container. The Apollo Router Getting Started guide explains how to compose a supergraph schema and provides an example schema that can be used for testing.

The example below starts the router against a supergraph schema mounted from the host. The router listens on port 4000 by default.

docker run --rm \
  -v "$(pwd)/supergraph.graphql:/dist/schema/supergraph.graphql" \
  -e APOLLO_ROUTER_SUPERGRAPH_PATH=/dist/schema/supergraph.graphql \
  -p 4000:4000 \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/apollo-router:latest

Once the router is running, you can send GraphQL queries to http://127.0.0.1:4000/:

curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:4000/ \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"query": "{ __typename }"}'

Run the Router with GraphOS Uplink

If your supergraph is managed in Apollo GraphOS, you can omit the local schema entirely and let the router fetch it from Uplink:

docker run --rm \
  -e APOLLO_KEY="<your-graph-api-key>" \
  -e APOLLO_GRAPH_REF="<your-graph-ref>" \
  -p 4000:4000 \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/apollo-router:latest

See the upstream Docker guide for additional environment variables and tuning options.

Kubernetes Deployment with Helm

Apollo publishes an official Helm chart for the router. It can be configured to use your GraphOS credentials and the apollo-router Chainguard Container image:

cat > values.yaml <<EOF
image:
  repository: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/apollo-router
  tag: latest

managedFederation:
  apiKey: "<your-graph-api-key>"
  graphRef: "<your-graph-ref>"
EOF

Install the chart from the upstream OCI registry:

helm install apollo-router \
  --namespace apollo-router \
  --create-namespace \
  --values values.yaml \
  oci://ghcr.io/apollographql/helm-charts/router

Once the pod is Ready, port-forward to the router service and send a query:

kubectl port-forward -n apollo-router svc/apollo-router 4000:80

curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:4000/ \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"query": "{ __typename }"}'

Refer to the Apollo Router Kubernetes documentation for production guidance on probes, autoscaling, Rhai/coprocessor extensibility, and supergraph delivery via GraphOS.

Documentation and Resources

• Apollo GraphOS Routing — Get Started
• Apollo Router on Docker (router only)
• Apollo Router on Kubernetes — Quickstart
• Apollo Router GitHub Repository

What are Chainguard Containers?

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All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

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• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.