Ever since the inception of technology in almost everything we do, we’ve always strived to deliver more accessible, quicker, and much more secure access to our cloud-based services and data to our clients or even employees. This struggle has, in turn, been rewarded by the application programming interface.
An API is software that acts as an intermediary between two applications allowing them to communicate with each other. Since most of our work requires multiple applications to communicate with each other, it leads to the use of numerous APIs, thus the need for an API gateway; a good example is the Amazon API gateway. Thus, in this article, you will learn what API gateways are, what they do, and the most significant aspects they should address.
What is an API Gateway
An API gateway is an API management tool that can also be referred to as a traffic manager. It sits in between an API endpoint and its various backend services. As a reverse proxy, the API gateway is responsible for taking API requests and calls from client apps and matching them to the intended station or service. This station or service processes the API calls and requests and then sends feedback back to the client or user.
API gateways can either be open source or proprietary. As stated above, an excellent example of one of the most popular API gateways is the Amazon API gateway. This acts as a front door allowing applications to access data or functionality from the backend services such as code running on AWS Lambda.
What Does API Gateway Do
The primary function of an API gateway is to provide a standard interface and a focal point where client apps can communicate while exchanging information. Therefore, the API gateway acts as a single entry point that receives API requests from external or internal microservices, also known as API calls; it then packages the multiple requests and then routes them to the intended APIs.
The API gateway then receives and delivers the response to the client apps that sent in the API requests. Also, if you have a microservice architecture, API gateways come in handy. This is because, with a microservice architecture, a single request initiates several client apps and services that use multiple APIs.
In such a scenario, the API gateway provides you with a single point of entry for an established group of microservices. It then applies the policies to determine their behavior and availability. Other tasks that API gateway hands involve microservices and APIs include:
- Service discovery
- Basic business logic
- Cache management
- Load balancing and stabilization
- Protocol translation
- Security policy enforcement and authentication
Benefits Of API Gateways
- Provide flexibility
Since API gateways are based on a service mesh architecture, they are highly configurable; therefore, they can encapsulate the internal structure of client apps in multiple ways.
- Extend legacy applications
API gateways can be used to extend the functionality of legacy apps instead of performing a complete and complicated migration
- Contributes to monitoring and observation
Since API gateways act as connecting bridge, they easily contribute to the observation and monitoring of all activities taking place in the system.
- Microservices load balancing
When keeping track of the API calls and API requests between the different internal microservices, it also balances the load between the nodes, ensuring that the app remains available
Key Aspects That API Gateways Should Address
When creating an API gateway, there are a couple of aspects that it should address, and they include:
- Scaling
An API gateway should support high availability, scalability, and shared state without affecting the level of performance.
- Threat protection
API gateways are required to provide protection against malicious malware and hackers who are seeking to infiltrate the system
- Rate limiting
A quality API gateway is required to help reduce backend APIs load since it helps prevent overuse and misuse.
- API Transformation
API gateways should be capable of transforming response and request payloads since they are integral to the switch to rest APIs. This is mainly because a rest API is based on the much more modern REST API architecture.
- API security
As the number one security drive for API gateways, access control acts as the manager that regulates who can access the data and who cannot. Also, it’s responsible for establishing the rules on how the data is handled. This can be achieved by using API keys.
Luke Parker is a visionary leader and the driving force behind Alfa seek, a premier platform dedicated to the future of electronic trading. With a deep-rooted passion for finance and technology, Luke has been instrumental in transforming Alfa seek from a modest startup into a leading beacon for traders worldwide.
