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What is an API?

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What exactly is an API? API stands for A pplication P rogramming I nterface. Perhaps some of you may have already used APIs in your software applications, which you may think that API is an already written piece of code dedicated to perform a specific task. Yes it is, but hold on! The API itself gives the actual meaning when it is read backwards.   an Interface used by Programs to interact with an Application. Essentially, an API could be anything in any form that is used by 2 software components to communicate with each other. Basically an API allows one application to talk to another, directly and securely. Some important facts about APIs will be listed below, No direct human usage of APIs. That is an API is normally invoked by some other code which is running on a computer. Normally this code is written by a developer to talk to the API. APIs expose something useful. You have APIs on your computer itself. (eg: when you type a key in the keyboard it gives
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Microservices

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You may have certainly come across this term, and may be curious what exactly it refers to. Okay I would say, this mainly refers to an architecture, which is used in developing software applications. It’s more like implementing specific use cases, independently. That is the software is being decomposed into independently deployable, simple services that could cater a specific business need. Microservice Architecture These components may use different languages, technologies, frameworks etc. and finally can communicate each other via well-defined interfaces, or rather APIs. That is they communicate each other in a loosely coupled way. This I would say, is ideal for large applications, providing better agility in the long term software development process. Especially when working with large teams, so now you can assign certain features of the app to certain team members. Also can scale fast unlike the monolithic architecture.   If not for micro services, how can pe
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API Gateway

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This is needed when bringing all the microservices together, or rather this can be introduced as the entry point of the requests made by clients for each API service. All requests from clients first go through the API Gateway. Basically this abstracts the complexity behind the application you are going to build, so now the clients simply talk to the gateway to invoke specific services. The API Gateway is responsible for request routing, composition, and protocol translation.  Or rather this is an intermediate layer for the APIs and clients who call them, providing the functions listed below, authentication  authorization of API calls security throttling and rate limiting Proxy vs. API gateway Precisely, an API gateway is so much functionally richer than a proxy. Proxy provides you a new endpoint for an existing API and add some lightweight security and monitoring. The gateway, of course, still offers the same capabilities that an API proxy would offer for
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Micro API gateway

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Introduction Yes we have repeatedly heard of API gateways, but what is it, a micro API gateway?? Is it something evolved when microservices came in to play, you ask. Of course the micro API gateway concept emerged with the microservice architecture. However micro API gateway again is a type of API gateway, but now it serves a different set of use cases, other than the typical API gateway. Essentially, WSO2 offline micro API gateway is an approach to meet your different API needs. This enables the gateway to run in a localized environment, because now all the information of the API, including the API name, API context, API version and the subscription details are being stored at the gateway itself. In the APIM 3.0 release, WSO2 micro API gateway is authenticated using the API key,  which I was a part of. WSO2 micro API gateway WSO2 micro API gateway is powered by Ballerina. Initially this was coded in Ballerina 0.89, but will be upgraded to the latest version. 
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