Api Proxy
What Is an API Proxy? | heynode.com
A proxy is something that acts on behalf of something else. Sitting between your application and your backend, API proxies provide an interface to developers for accessing backend services.
An API proxy is a thin API server that exposes a stable interface for an existing service or services. You can create a custom API interface for an application (often a frontend) that interacts with different parts of your backend. This allows you to define an API which adapts to the needs of your application, without having to change the underlying services in your backend.
By the end of this Hey Node introductory tutorial, you should be able to:
Understand what an API proxy is.
Explain the benefits of using an API proxy.
Goal
Understand what an API proxy is and how it can help you customize the way an application consumes your backend services by decoupling the frontend from implementation details of the backend. Also, learn reasons to use an API proxy including the ability to perform data transformations, hide complex calls to multiple services, and cache large or slow results.
Prerequisites
None
Watch: What Is an API Proxy?
Definitions
First, let’s define some terms we’ll be using:
API: Application Programming Interface, an interface that allows different programs to interact with each other.
Backend services (or just “backend”, or “services”): The servers, APIs, or databases that make up the parts of the architecture that your applications rely on.
Consumers: The applications that interact with your backend. Used interchangeably with “frontends” in this article. Consumers can include mobile, web, or desktop applications as well as anyone or anything making API calls to your services.
Shim: A shim is a layer of code which helps provide compatibility between different interfaces or APIs.
What’s an API proxy?
An API proxy acts as an intermediary between a consumer and backend services. It can be a small shim, or a larger piece of code that handles data transformations, security, routing, traffic shaping and more. It can expose an interface customized for the consumer, and then makes the appropriate calls to the backend service(s) on behalf of the consumer.
Imagine you have a modern web application that needs to get information from a legacy backend that communicates in XML. Instead of making your web application talk directly to that legacy backend using XML, you can create an API proxy which the web application communicates with in JSON format. The API proxy will then translate the request from the web application into the XML format that the legacy backend is expecting, and translate the response from the backend into the JSON format the web app is expecting.
This is just one example of what an API proxy can do. In a similar scenario, the web application might need to get data across 10 different services in your backend. Instead of having the web application make all 10 of those API calls directly to the backend, you can use an API proxy to which the web application makes a single API call. The API proxy can then make all 10 calls on behalf of the web application, gather their results, and send the data back to the web application.
An API proxy exists as an intermediary, helping a consumer get the data it needs without having to talk directly to the services that provide that data.
This can be useful in situations where you want to avoid rewriting your backend services to accommodate a different access pattern, or you want to keep a consumer of these services decoupled from the implementation of the actual service. An API proxy acts as a level of abstraction between the consumer and the backend.
This pattern also allows you to expose a stable interface to the consuming application. If your backend services change, you can make the appropriate changes at the API proxy level without having to change how the consuming application accesses the data. That might sound like duplicating work, and sometimes it is, but it also allows you to insulate the developers working on the frontend from changes that might be happening on the backend. When changes occur on the backend, someone just needs to fix the API proxy implementation, and the frontend won’t need to change anything at all.
Adding a layer between your frontend and backend will increase latency to some degree. An API proxy can also allow you to implement caching over some of your expensive API calls, which can ultimately decrease latency. An API proxy that makes requests and caches the combined result will improve performance for users over making separate requests.
Recap
An API proxy is an interface that sits between your frontend and the actual backend services. Using an API proxy decouples the frontend from implementation details of the backend, and allows you to create a custom interface that the frontend will interact with instead of the backend itself. Some reasons to use an API proxy include the ability to perform data transformations, hide complex calls to multiple services, and cache large or slow results.
Further your understanding
Without an API proxy, how could changes to a backend affect its consumers? How would backend changes affect a consumer interfacing with an API proxy? In each case, what adjustments in implementation would be required?
What other types of consumers can you think of besides a web application?
Can you think of an example of an API proxy?
Additional resources
IBM Backend for Frontend example ()
Backends for Frontends Pattern ()
API Proxy vs. API Gateway: Which Should You Use? – Akana
What’s the difference between an API proxy vs. API gateway? And which one should you use? In this blog, we demystify:What an API proxy differences between an API proxy vs. API an API gateway is better than an API Is an API Proxy? An API proxy acts as a gateway between your developers and backend services, although it is limited in its capabilities when compared to an API gateway. It’s an intermediary that makes requests on behalf of developers, sitting between application and backend services. An API gateway provides more features including rate limiting, security, and API monitoring. What this means to us in the API world, is that when you’re using an API proxy, your API had better already exist. An API proxy provides a new endpoint for an existing API, but it can’t do everything an API gateway can do. API Proxy vs. API Gateway: What’s the Difference? Both an API proxy and API gateway provide access to your backend services. An API gateway can even act as a simple API proxy. However, an API gateway has a more robust set of features — especially around security and monitoring — than an API proxy. Should I Use an API Proxy? An API proxy is basically a lightweight API gateway. It includes some basic security and monitoring capabilities. So, if you already have an API and your needs are simple, an API proxy will work there’s only so much an API proxy can do. It really can’t do anything particularly sophisticated with content or routing. And it definitely can’t do transformation, mediation, or orchestration. Enterprise API Management, DefinedAPI proxies and API gateways are critical in enterprise API management — and digital transformation. In this white paper, you’ll learn how to leverage enterprise API management to drive your digital-first initiative forward. Get the White PaperShould I Use an API Gateway? The short answer is yes. An API gateway provides a single entry point across multiple APIs. It delivers robust security, including rate limiting. And it can even be used with external consumers in support of microservices and to secure the microservices mesh. Plus, an API gateway can act as an API API gateway provides a much richer set of capabilities than an API proxy. When you use an API gateway to expose an API, you don’t even need to start with an API. You can take multiple existing services of varying types, and use the gateway to construct a modern, well-structured gateway, of course, still offers the same capabilities that an API proxy would offer for security and monitoring. But it takes these and other capabilities much further. Unlike an API proxy, an API gateway offers comprehensive service orchestration, transformation, mediation, and DoS prevention (including things like antivirus and threat detection). It can also offer incredibly rich content and transport security capabilities that go far beyond anything a simple proxy can API gateway is an important part of the API API Proxy Can Act As An API Gateway, But a Gateway Is Better An API proxy may be a good solution for taking the first few simple steps with a basic API or two. But to meet real enterprise API needs you’re going to need an API gateway. Why? MediationHow do vendors with proxy servers do things like SOAP to REST mediation? It’s simple. They write code that their customers have to support — or pay for updates — anytime something an API gateway, like the Akana API Gateway, you can turn your existing services into exceptional APIs with sophisticated security and monitoring enabled in a matter of minutes. Try that with a proxy and you’ll quickly find yourself investing a good few weeks or even months writing code — only to do it all over again every single time you need to make a minor change. OrchestrationA proxy server can’t do orchestration. But an API gateway can provide orchestration. You can use your gateway for API orchestration to decide how to service each request, and construct service calls API gateway can:Take a request for details on a specific catalog a lookup service to find where this information nstruct a call to a service that has some of the needed the response or pre-programmed logic to construct one or more calls to other services to get more tegrationA proxy server can’t do integrations like a gateway can. You can use an API gateway instead of ESB as your integration server. API gateways are more efficient, more secure, and help you modernize your applications. Explore more integration technologies >>Plus, an API Gateway Can Do Everything a Proxy CanA well-designed and implemented gateway, like the Akana API Gateway, will automatically optimize its configuration depending on how it’s being used. It can act as a simple, lightweight proxy, offering exceptional performance. So, you’d better make sure you choose a gateway that knows when it needs to act like a nice simple Choose the Akana API Gateway? The Akana API gateway is a key component of the Akana API platform. It’s the best choice to accelerate digital transformation in the enterprise — without sacrificing security. That’s because Akana:Makes it easy to create and deploy APIs rengthens security by using the API rtners with you on your API strategy and digital transformation strategy. Example: Akana API Gateway in the EnterpriseThat’s why a large bank chose Akana’s API gateway for mediation and orchestration. With Akana, they were able to quickly mediate from SOAP to REST using declarative out-of-the box mediation policies. They were also able to create new APIs from scratch by orchestrating the integration of multiple services together using a configuration — not coding — the case study >>See Akana in ActionSee for yourself what Akana can do for you. Watch the on-demand Akana demo to see the Akana API gateway in action. ▶️ WATCH THE DEMO Become an ExpertAPI BasicsAPI Lifecycle
Step 1: Create an API proxy | Apigee Edge
Step 1: Create an API proxy | Apigee Edge | Apigee Docs
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You’re viewing Apigee Edge Apigee X documentation.
This section explains how to create a simple API proxy.
Edge
To create an API proxy using the Edge UI:
Sign in to
Click API Proxies in the main window:
Click +Proxy.
Apigee walks you through the process of creating a new proxy. First, select the type of proxy:
Click Reverse proxy (most common).
Apigee displays the Proxy details page.
Configure your proxy details, as follows:
Name: Enter getstarted. If a proxy already exists with this
name, then use a different name.
Base path: Ensure this is set to /getstarted.
The base path is part of the URL used to make requests to your API. Edge uses the
URL to match and route incoming requests to the proper API proxy.
Description (Optional): Enter a description for your new API proxy,
such as Get started proxy.
Target (Existing API): Enter. This defines the
target URL that Apigee Edge invokes on a request to the API proxy.
The mocktarget service is hosted at Apigee and returns simple data. It requires no API
key or access token.
Your proxy’s details should look like the following:
Click Next.
On the Common policies page, under Security: Authorization ensure that Pass through (no authorization) is selected, and click Next.
On the Virtual hosts page, select default and secure, and click
Next.
On the Summary page, make sure the Test environment is
selected under Optional Deployment and click Create and
deploy:
Apigee creates your new API proxy and deploys it to your test environment:
Click Edit proxy to display the Overview page
for the API proxy:
Note that if you expand the [ +], the UI lists both HTTP and HTTPS URLs
for the test environment:
As a result, you can send requests to either, but this tutorial uses HTTPS.
Classic Edge (Private Cloud)
To create an API proxy using the Classic Edge UI:
Sign in to ms-ip:9000, where ms-ip is the
IP address or DNS name of the Management Server node.
Click + API Proxy in the upper right:
Apigee walks you through the process of creating a new proxy. The first decision is the
type of proxy:
Select Reverse proxy (most common), and click Next.
Apigee then displays the Details screen.
Configure your proxy with the following settings:
Proxy Name: Enter “getstarted”. If a proxy already exists with this
name, choose a different name.
Proxy Base Path: Ensure this is set to “/getstarted”.
The Proxy Base Path is part of the URL used to make requests to your API. Edge uses the
Existing API: Enter “. This defines the
(Optional) Description: Enter a description for your new API proxy,
such as “Getting Started proxy”.
On the Security screen, select Pass through (none) as the
security option, and click Next:
On the Virtual Hosts screen, accept the default selections and click
On the Build screen, make sure the test environment is
selected next to Deploy Environments and click Build and
Deploy:
Click View getstarted proxy in the editor to display the Overview page
Next step
Step 1
Step 2: Test your new proxy
Step 3
Step 4
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4. 0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2. 0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2021-09-28 UTC.
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Frequently Asked Questions about api proxy
What is the difference between API and API proxy?
API Gateway: What’s the Difference? Both an API proxy and API gateway provide access to your backend services. An API gateway can even act as a simple API proxy. However, an API gateway has a more robust set of features — especially around security and monitoring — than an API proxy.Jun 30, 2020
How do I setup a proxy API?
To create an API proxy using the Edge UI:Sign in to apigee.com/edge.Click API Proxies in the main window:Click +Proxy. … Click Reverse proxy (most common). … Click Next.On the Common policies page, under Security: Authorization ensure that Pass through (no authorization) is selected, and click Next.More items…
What is API proxy integration?
PDF. HTTP proxy integration is a simple, powerful, and versatile mechanism to build an API that allows a web application to access multiple resources or features of the integrated HTTP endpoint, for example the entire website, with a streamlined setup of a single API method.
