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Route to private services from Workers

This example shows how to use Workers VPC to create a centralized gateway that routes requests based on URL paths, provides authentication and rate limiting, and load balances across internal services.

Prerequisites

  • Multiple private APIs or services running in your VPC/virtual network (we'll use a user service and orders service)
  • Cloudflare Tunnel configured and running (follow the Get Started guide to set up or create a tunnel from the dashboard ↗)
  • Workers account with Workers VPC access

1. Create the VPC Services

First, create services for your internal APIs using hostnames:

Terminal window
# Create user service
npx wrangler vpc service create user-service \
  --type http \
  --tunnel-id <YOUR_TUNNEL_ID> \
  --hostname user-api.internal.example.com


# Create orders service
npx wrangler vpc service create order-service \
  --type http \
  --tunnel-id <YOUR_TUNNEL_ID> \
  --hostname orders-api.internal.example.com

Note the service IDs returned for the next step.

2. Configure your Worker

Update your wrangler.toml:

{
  "$schema": "./node_modules/wrangler/config-schema.json",
  "name": "api-gateway",
  "main": "src/index.js",
  "compatibility_date": "2024-01-01",
  "vpc_services": [
    {
      "binding": "USER_SERVICE",
      "service_id": "<YOUR_USER_SERVICE_ID>"
    },
    {
      "binding": "ORDER_SERVICE",
      "service_id": "<YOUR_ORDER_SERVICE_ID>"
    }
  ]
}

3. Implement the Worker

In your Workers code, use the VPC Service bindings to route requests to the appropriate services:

index.js
export default {
  async fetch(request, env, ctx) {
    const url = new URL(request.url);


    // Route to internal services
    if (url.pathname.startsWith('/api/users')) {
      const response = await env.USER_SERVICE.fetch("https://user-api.internal.example.com" + url.pathname);
      return response;
    } else if (url.pathname.startsWith('/api/orders')) {
      const response = await env.ORDER_SERVICE.fetch("https://orders-api.internal.example.com" + url.pathname);
      return response;
    }


    return new Response('Not Found', { status: 404 });
  },
};

4. Deploy and test

Now, you can deploy and test your Worker:

Terminal window
npx wrangler deploy
Terminal window
# Test user service requests
curl https://api-gateway.workers.dev/api/users


# Test orders service requests
curl https://api-gateway.workers.dev/api/orders

Next steps