AWS API Gateway is a fully managed service that enables developers to create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale. In this blog post, we will dive deep into the features and benefits of using AWS API Gateway, as well as walk through some examples of how it can be used in real-world scenarios.
What is AWS API Gateway?
API Gateway is a service that allows developers to create, publish, and manage APIs for their applications. With API Gateway, developers can expose the functionality of their backend services, such as Lambda functions, EC2 instances, and more, through an API. This makes it easy for developers to build and deploy scalable, secure, and highly available APIs.
API Gateway provides a number of features that help developers create and manage their APIs, such as:
- Easy creation and deployment: API Gateway allows developers to create and deploy APIs through the AWS Management Console or the AWS CLI, without the need to provision or manage any infrastructure.
- Automatic scaling: API Gateway automatically scales to handle the traffic to your APIs, so you don’t have to worry about provisioning or managing any infrastructure.
- Security and access control: API Gateway provides security features such as AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) integration and support for popular identity providers such as Amazon Cognito and Okta.
- Monitoring and logging: API Gateway provides detailed metrics and logging for all requests and responses, making it easy for developers to monitor and troubleshoot their APIs.
- Caching: API Gateway allows you to cache the responses to your API requests, reducing the number of times your backend service needs to be called.
- Throttling: API Gateway allows you to limit the number of requests that can be made to your API, to help prevent your backend service from being overwhelmed.
- Custom domains: API Gateway allows you to use your own custom domain names for your APIs, instead of using the default domain provided by AWS.
How Does AWS API Gateway Work?
API Gateway is a fully managed service, which means that AWS takes care of all the underlying infrastructure and resources required to run the service. When you create an API in API Gateway, you define the routes and resources that your API will respond to. You can also configure the security settings, caching, and throttling for your API.
Once your API is configured, you can deploy it to one or more stages, such as “prod” or “test”. When a client makes a request to one of the routes in your API, the request is handled by API Gateway. API Gateway then passes the request to your backend service, which can be a Lambda function, an EC2 instance, or any other service that can be reached over the internet.
Once your backend service processes the request, it sends the response back to API Gateway, which then sends the response back to the client.
You can also use the AWS Management Console or the AWS CLI to monitor the requests and responses to your API, as well as view and troubleshoot any errors that occur.
Benefits of Using AWS API Gateway
API Gateway provides a number of benefits to developers who are looking to create and manage APIs for their applications. Some of the key benefits include:
- Easy to use: API Gateway is easy to use, with a simple and intuitive interface that makes it easy for developers to create, publish, and manage APIs.
AWS CloudFormation can be used to deploy an API Gateway as a stack, along with all the necessary resources for your API. Here is an overview of the process for deploying an API Gateway using CloudFormation:
- Create a CloudFormation template that defines the resources for your API Gateway stack. This template should include the following types of resources:
- AWS::ApiGateway::RestApi: The root resource of the REST API.
- AWS::ApiGateway::Resource: A resource within the REST API.
- AWS::ApiGateway::Method: The method (e.g., GET, POST) associated with a resource.
- AWS::ApiGateway::Integration: The integration between the API Gateway and the backend service.
- AWS::ApiGateway::Deployment: A deployment of the API Gateway.
- AWS::ApiGateway::Stage: A stage for the API Gateway deployment.
- Create the stack using the CloudFormation template, using the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the CloudFormation API.
- Once the stack is created, you can use the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the CloudFormation API to update or delete the stack, as well as monitor the status of the stack.
This template creates an API Gateway with a single resource named “myresource” and a GET method. The backend integration is a Lambda function with an ARN specified in the Fn::ImportValue function. The API Gateway deployment is named “prod” and it will be created and ready to use once this CloudFormation Stack is created
Please note that this is just a simple example and you may need to adjust and add more resources and properties according to your specific use case and requirements.
{
“AWSTemplateFormatVersion”: “2010-09-09”,
“Resources”: {
“MyApi”: {
“Type”: “AWS::ApiGateway::RestApi”,
“Properties”: {
“Name”: “My API”
}
},
“MyResource”: {
“Type”: “AWS::ApiGateway::Resource”,
“Properties”: {
“ParentId”: {“Fn::GetAtt”: [“MyApi”, “RootResourceId”]},
“PathPart”: “myresource”,
“RestApiId”: {“Ref”: “MyApi”}
}
},
“MyMethod”: {
“Type”: “AWS::ApiGateway::Method”,
“Properties”: {
“HttpMethod”: “GET”,
“ResourceId”: {“Ref”: “MyResource”},
“RestApiId”: {“Ref”: “MyApi”},
“AuthorizationType”: “NONE”,
“Integration”: {
“Type”: “AWS_PROXY”,
“Uri”: {
“Fn::Join”: [
“”,
[
“arn:aws:apigateway:”,
{
“Ref”: “AWS::Region”
},
“:lambda:path/2015-03-31/functions/”,
{
“Fn::ImportValue”: “MyLambdaFunctionArn”
},
“/invocations”
]
]
}
}
}
},
“MyDeployment”: {
“Type”: “AWS::ApiGateway::Deployment”,
“Properties”: {
“RestApiId”: {“Ref”: “MyApi”}
}
},
“MyStage”: {
“Type”: “AWS::ApiGateway::Stage”,
“Properties”: {
“DeploymentId”: {“Ref”: “MyDeployment”},
“RestApiId”: {“Ref”: “MyApi”},
“StageName”: “prod”
}
}
}
}
