Choosing an API gateway
API gateways are tools that have the primary responsibility of receiving requests from consumers and responding in a way that’s aligned with your business objectives. From a consumer perspective, an API gateway is indistinguishable from the API itself. The API gateway receives requests from consumers and directs those requests to the real API. The gateway sits between consumers and the API backend that holds the code that powers the features:
Figure 13.1 – Simplified API gateway architecture
In addition to being the bridge between the API code and its consumers, gateways can do a lot more. Here are the most important elements to consider when choosing an API gateway:
- Architectural-type support: Providing gateway capabilities to different architectural types, such as REST, GraphQL, gRPC, and asynchronous APIs
- Request routing: Determining which backend service should handle a particular API request based...
