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Amazon API Gateway
Why API Gateway?
Using Amazon API Gateway, developers can easily build, publish, maintain, monitor, and defend APIs of any scale. It is available as a public or private cloud service. Data, business logic, and functionality from your backend services are accessible to apps through APIs, which serve as the “front door” to those services.The API Gateway can be used to construct RESTful APIs and WebSocket APIs that allow for real-time two-way communication applications. Serverless and containerized workloads, as well as web applications and web services, are all supported by API Gateway. In order to accept and handle hundreds of thousands of API calls simultaneously, API Gateway is in charge of all the duties involved. All of the above activities are included in this list, which includes CORS support, authorization (including throttling and monitoring), and API version management. Using API Gateway does not entail any upfront expenditures or a minimum fee. API calls and data transfers are billed separately, and the API Gateway’s tiered pricing allows you to keep your costs as low as possible as your API usage grows.
How it Works
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Features
It is simple for developers to publish, maintain, monitor, protect, and run APIs at any scale using the Amazon API Gateway, which is a fully managed service provided by Amazon.This service allows you to pay for it on a pay-as-you-go basis, and it will take care of all of the undifferentiated heavy lifting that is required in order to run APIs in a secure and reliable manner on a wide scale.As a result of the proliferation of mobile devices and the rise of the Internet of Things, it is becoming an increasingly common practice to make backend systems and data accessible to apps through the use of application programming interfaces (APIs). This practice is gaining popularity. A growing amount of time and effort is being spent on the construction and administration of application programming interfaces (APIs) in order to accommodate the large number of apps and communities of developers that rely on APIs. It is possible to construct client SDKs that are compatible with API Gateway using a variety of programming languages. These languages include JavaScript, iOS, and Android. Client software development kits (SDKs) can also be generated by API Gateway for usage in conjunction with other API Gateway services, such as web services.
RESTful and WebSocket API Support
API Gateway gives you the ability to create RESTful APIs by using either HTTP or REST APIs. HTTP APIs ought to be used for the construction of APIs that lack API management functionality. In comparison to REST APIs implemented through API Gateway, serverless HTTP APIs can reduce costs by up to 71 percent and latency by up to 60 percent.Using API Gateway, you may access REST APIs and API management tools such as consumption plans and API keys for your API proxy-enabled applications. Use WebSocket APIs to construct real-time two-way communication apps like chat and streaming dashboards.
Private AWS ELB & Cloud Map integrations
VPC resources can be accessed using API Gateway. If you’d like to build APIs for IP-based services, such as ECS jobs, you can use HTTP APIs.
Resiliency
API Gateway helps you manage traffic by restricting the number of requests per second for each HTTP method in your APIs. By focusing on business logic and services rather than infrastructure, API Gateway frees you from having to worry about it. You can save time by storing your API data in a cache with re-usable keys and a time-to-live in seconds.
Easy API Development
With API Gateway, you can quickly and easily build a custom API to call AWS Lambda functions. Web services having publicly accessible HTTP endpoints such as Amazon EC2, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, and AWS Lambda are all included. In the API Gateway console, you can design and manage your REST API, create client SDKs, and monitor your API metrics.
API Operations Monitoring
API Gateway provides a dashboard for monitoring service calls when an API is implemented. API calls, latency, and errors are all tracked by Amazon CloudWatch via the API Gateway panel. API Gateway APIs can be equipped with custom alerts thanks to CloudWatch’s ability to record monitoring data. API Gateway can record errors in API execution to CloudWatch Logs to aid in debugging.
Authorization from Amazon Web Services
API Gateway can let you authenticate and validate API calls to AWS services using signature version 4 for REST APIs and WebSocket APIs. It is possible to grant access to AWS resources using signature version 4 authentication through AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). In addition, bearer tokens such as JWT tokens and SAML assertions can be verified and authorized using AWS Lambda functions.
API Keys for External Developers
Using API Gateway, you can keep track of the many third-party developers who are using your REST APIs. Using API Gateway, you may grant specific third-party developers access to your APIs based on permissions you define for each API key. Throttling and request quotas can be established for each API key individually in your plans. This is an optional feature that must be turned on for each technique before it can be used.
Generation of SDKs
To make it easier for you to test new APIs from your apps and to provide SDKs for third-party developers, API Gateway can build client SDKs for a range of platforms. To sign requests and manage API keys in the developed SDKs, AWS credentials are required. API Gateway can produce Ruby and Objective-C/Swift client SDKs for all of the aforementioned platforms. You can use the AWS CLI to develop and download an SDK for a supported platform by using the get-sdk command.
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Management of the API Lifecycle
With the help of API Gateway, which is compatible with RESTful APIs, applications will be able to continue using older versions of an API even after the most recent version of the API has been made available to the public. Because API Gateway comes equipped with release management features, it is simple to monitor many API versions at the same time. You can specify which API endpoints you want to communicate with at each stage. When utilising API Gateway, it is possible to give a specialized domain name to a certain version or stage of an API. You are able to test new API versions that either update older API releases or provide new functionality to older API releases. This allows you to ensure backward compatibility when user communities move to accept the most recent release.
Benefits
- API development
FAPI Gateway allows you to simultaneously operate many versions of the same service for testing and iteration. For API calls and data transfers, there are no upfront fees, and you just pay for what you use.
- Effectiveness in any context
Using Amazon CloudFront, we are able to deliver the lowest possible latency for API requests and responses to end users. To avoid overloading the back-end processes, it’s critical to keep traffic to a minimum and only permit legitimate API calls.
- Scaled-down cost savings
API Gateway offers tier-based pricing for API queries. AWS account API request fees can be decreased down to just $0.90 per million API requests, even as the volume of API calls increases.
- Streamlined reporting
To keep tabs on API requests, data latency, and error rates using Amazon CloudWatch, the API Gateway dashboard provides a wealth of metrics and statistics.
- Intuitive security measures are available.
Use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) with Amazon Cognito to grant users access to your APIs. API Gateway has native OIDC and OAuth2 support if you utilize OAuth tokens.AWS Lambda authenticators make It possible to use Lambda to meet specific authorization needs.
- Flexible security controls
Using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Amazon Cognito, you may restrict access to your APIs. API Gateway provides native support for OIDC and OAuth2 tokens. It is possible to run a Lambda authorizer using AWS Lambda in order to enable specific custom authorisation rules and policies.
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API Types:
RESTful APIs
You are able to construct RESTful APIs that are optimized for serverless workloads and HTTP backends by making use of HTTP application programming interfaces (APIs). HTTP APIs are the best choice for designing APIs that only require API proxy capabilities, such as web service APIs.Using REST APIs, you may combine API proxy and API administration services in a single solution provided by API Gateway.
WEBSOCKET APIS
Real-time two-way communication products, such as chat apps and streaming dashboards, can be quickly built using WebSocket APIs. Message transfer between your customers and your backend service is handled by API Gateway, which maintains a constant connection to your backend service.
Pricing
You only pay for the time your APIs are really being utilized using Amazon API Gateway. There are no upfront charges or obligations. You only pay for the API requests you receive and the data you transport out of the system when using HTTP APIs or REST APIs. There are no outbound data transmission fees for Private APIs.However, AWS PrivateLink charges will be charged while using private APIs in API Gateway. API Gateway, on the other hand, offers an optional data caching service with a variable hourly pricing based on cache size. It is possible to pay just when your WebSocket APIs are in use and the amount you pay is depending on the number of messages transmitted and received as well the number of connection minutes you have used the APIs.
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