API what now?

API gateways seem much scarier than they actually are and are actually just a specific implementation of the reverse proxy. If you don’t know what that is, read my previous article on the topic.

Proxies

Just a reverse proxy?

API gateways are reverse proxies that typically operate at the level 7 application layer and understand the HTTP protocol and its subset models (REST/ gRPC/ GraphQL/ etc). They handle cross-cutting concerns of APIs and decouple them from the service implementations themselves. Gateways aim to streamline API management for complex systems.

Common API functionality that is handled by gateways include:

Authorization
Rate limiting
SSL Encryption
Caching
Metrics and monitoring
etc

I’m not sure what diagram would best fit here, so here’s Amazon API Gateway