Routes

Routes are the heart of KETE. They define what events go where.

What is a Route?

Think of a route like a mail forwarding rule:

"When I get a LOGIN event from the master realm, convert it to JSON and send it to Kafka."

Every route has five parts:

Part	What it does	Required?
Realm Matchers	Which realms to listen to	No
Event Matchers	Which events to forward	No
Serializer	What format to use	No (JSON default)
Destination	Where to send events	✅ Yes
Retry	Retry on failure	No

How Routes Work

flowchart LR
    E["📥 Event"] --> M{"🔍 Match?"}
    M -->|No| D["🗑️ Skip"]
    M -->|Yes| S["📝 Format"]
    S --> Dest["🚀 Send"]

1. Event arrives from Keycloak
2. Matchers filter — does this route want this event?
3. Serializer formats — convert to JSON, XML, etc.
4. Destination sends — deliver to Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc.

Quick Example

Send login events to Kafka:

kete.routes.logins.event-matchers.filter=glob:LOGIN*
kete.routes.logins.destination.kind=kafka
kete.routes.logins.destination.bootstrap.servers=kafka:9092
kete.routes.logins.destination.topic=login-events

Without matchers, a route accepts all events from all realms.

Disabling Routes

Routes are enabled by default. To disable a specific route:

kete.routes.my-route.enabled=false

To disable KETE entirely, see Enabling & Disabling.

Multiple Routes

Define as many routes as you need. Each works independently:

# Route 1: Everything to Kafka
kete.routes.all.destination.kind=kafka
kete.routes.all.destination.bootstrap.servers=kafka:9092
kete.routes.all.destination.topic=all-events

# Route 2: Errors to webhook
kete.routes.alerts.event-matchers.filter=glob:*_ERROR
kete.routes.alerts.destination.kind=http
kete.routes.alerts.destination.url=https://alerts.example.com/hook

Match Modes

When you have multiple matchers, you can control how they combine:

Mode	Behavior
any	Event matches if any matcher accepts it (default)
all	Event matches only if all matchers accept it

# Match mode for realm matchers
kete.routes.strict.realm-match-mode=all

# Match mode for event matchers
kete.routes.strict.event-match-mode=all

Example: Match Multiple Event Types (any)

# Match LOGIN OR LOGOUT events (default mode is 'any')
kete.routes.auth.event-matchers.login=glob:LOGIN*
kete.routes.auth.event-matchers.logout=glob:LOGOUT*
kete.routes.auth.destination.kind=kafka
kete.routes.auth.destination.bootstrap.servers=kafka:9092
kete.routes.auth.destination.topic=auth-events

Example: Require All Conditions (all)

# Match only events that match BOTH patterns
kete.routes.strict.event-match-mode=all
kete.routes.strict.event-matchers.must-be-login=glob:LOGIN*
kete.routes.strict.event-matchers.must-not-error=glob:not:*_ERROR
kete.routes.strict.destination.kind=http
kete.routes.strict.destination.url=https://api.example.com/events

Retry

By default, if a destination is unreachable, the event is lost. Enable retry for more reliable delivery:

kete.routes.reliable.retry.enabled=true
kete.routes.reliable.retry.max-attempts=5
kete.routes.reliable.retry.wait-duration=PT2S

See Retry for full configuration options and duration formats.