How to Integrate Sentinel with Spring Cloud Gateway for Flow Control

Introduction

Sentinel can not only be used between services but also works perfectly with service gateways such as Spring Cloud Gateway or Zuul to implement flow control. Since version 1.6.0, Sentinel provides an adapter module for Spring Cloud Gateway, offering two resource dimensions for rate limiting:

Route dimension: the route entry configured in Spring configuration files, with the resource name being the corresponding routeId.

Custom API dimension: users can define API groups using Sentinel's provided API.

Dependency

Include the following Maven dependency:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.alibaba.csp</groupId>
  <artifactId>sentinel-spring-cloud-gateway-adapter</artifactId>
</dependency>

YAML Configuration

Configure the Sentinel dashboard address, Nacos discovery, and gateway routes as follows:

server:
  port: 2001
spring:
  application:
    name: gateway-service
  profiles:
    active: dev
  cloud:
    # Registration center
    nacos:
      discovery:
        server-addr: 127.0.0.1:8848
    # Flow control configuration
    sentinel:
      transport:
        port: 8719
        dashboard: localhost:8080
      # Degrade strategy
      scg:
        fallback:
          mode: response
          response-status: 426
          response-body: error request
    # Gateway configuration
    gateway:
      routes:
        - id: stock_route
          uri: lb://stock-service
          predicates:
            - Path=/stock/**

Start the Gateway

Add the following JVM argument to mark the application as an API Gateway type:

-Dcsp.sentinel.app.type=1

Configure Flow‑Control Rules

Use the Sentinel console to add rate‑limiting rules for the stock_route resource.

Summary

By integrating Sentinel with a gateway, you can easily set up flow control for a cluster of services or multiple service entry points. The example shows basic error‑response handling; for custom exception handling and more complex production scenarios, you can extend Sentinel's features or customize its source code.

Reference

https://github.com/alibaba/Sentinel/wiki