An API gateway acts as a intermediary between clients and backend services, handling tasks such as routing requests, managing API traffic, enforcing security policies, and providing additional functionalities like authentication and rate limiting. It serves as a single point of entry for multiple APIs, simplifying client access and enhancing the scalability and security of the overall architecture.
API gateways are primarily used to manage and optimize API traffic, enforce security policies, and provide additional functionalities like authentication, rate limiting, caching, and logging. They help streamline the process of exposing APIs to clients and integrating them with backend services, enhancing performance, scalability, and security.
REST API refers to a style of designing networked applications where APIs adhere to the principles of Representational State Transfer (REST). An API gateway, on the other hand, is a server that acts as an intermediary between clients and backend services, managing and optimizing API traffic.
The difference between an API gateway and an API platform lies in their scope and functionalities. An API gateway primarily focuses on managing API traffic, enforcing security policies, and providing additional functionalities like authentication and rate limiting. An API platform, however, encompasses a broader set of tools and services beyond traffic management, such as API design, documentation, testing, monitoring, and monetization.
REST API and HTTP API are not directly comparable to an API gateway. REST API refers to a style of designing APIs based on the principles of REST, specifying how resources should be represented and accessed over HTTP. HTTP API, on the other hand, can refer to any API that uses HTTP as its protocol for communication. An API gateway can support both RESTful APIs and other types of HTTP-based APIs by routing and managing HTTP requests between clients and backend services.