API Gateway


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 security and monitoring, but it takes these and other capabilities much further.

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