# Configuring Cognito Authorizer

In this section you will setup an **Authorizer** that will enable you to control access to your APIs using Amazon Cognito. This step is needed in order for the API Gateway endpoint to recognize the Cognito token being passed through request header.

## Configure API Gateway Authorizer

Go back into the AWS console and search for the API Gateway service. Once you navigate the API Gateway service you should see the following screen.

![npm run](../docs/images/api-gateway/api-1.png)

Click on **ContactAPI** and you should see the following screen.

![npm run](../docs/images/authorizer/auth-1.png)

Next in the panel to the right select **Authorizers**, and you should see the screen below.

![npm run](../docs/images/authorizer/auth-2.png)

You will now click the **Create New Authorizer** button, and the following screen will appear.

![npm run](../docs/images/authorizer/auth-3.png)

Next you will fill in the information to create the **Authorizer**. See the screenshot below for the values to select in the Authorizer form.

### Authorizer form explanation

- You will start by giving your **Authorizer** a name. In this example we are using the name **_cognito_authorizer_**.

- Since you will be using Cognito as your Authorizer you will select the **Cognito** radio button as the **type**. This will then give you different options to fill in on the form.

- For the **Cognito User Pool** you will select the Cognito User Pool that was created for you. This will link the **Cognito User Pool** to **Authorizer**.

- For the **Token Source** you will type the word **Authorization**, since the code passes the Cognito token through the Authorization header in the request of your code.

- Leave **Token Validation** validation blank. If you wanted you could use a regular expression to validate the token. For the sake of the demo this will be left blank.

- Lastly, you will click **Create**

![npm run](../docs/images/authorizer/auth-4.png)

You should then see the following screen.

![npm run](../docs/images/authorizer/auth-5.png)

That wraps up creating an authorizer.

## Next Steps

Now that you have setup an **Authorizer** you can configure the API Gateway resource actions to use them. This will be covered in the next section.

## [Configuring API Gateway Authorization](API.md)