A Web API gateway is an important part of any complete Web API strategy. It acts as a filter between your application and the outside world, allowing only authorized requests to be made to your server and rejecting unauthorized requests. The best practices for creating a web API gateway are:
Create a Request Log of Your Calls
You can use a request log to track the calls that your API gateway receives. A request log is simply a list of all the calls made to your web API. It allows you to see which ones were successful, how long the call took, and other details about each call.
Keep Track of All Changes
If you are developing an API gateway, then it is important to keep track of all changes that occur in your application and API. With this, you can see if there are any bugs or errors in the code and fix them before they become a problem for your users. This also helps you avoid making mistakes when writing new features or fixing existing ones in the future by remembering what happened last time around so that you don’t repeat those same mistakes again!
Use the Gateway to Enforce Rate Limiting
Rate limiting is a great way to prevent overloading the server. If you have a large number of users making requests at once, rate limiting can help prevent denial of service attacks and protect your server from being overwhelmed.
You can also use rate limiting in order to prevent abuse or excessive load on your web API gateway. For example, if you’re using an unauthenticated user login system (e.g., Slack). Then it’s critical that all new users are able to access their features without making too many requests within a certain time period—and this can be achieved through rate limiting!
Only Parse the Data You Need
This one is pretty straightforward. Don’t parse the data if you don’t need to. If a parameter isn’t needed, or even if it’s only part of the payload that’s being sent over the wire (for example, an input variable), then leave it out entirely! Parse only what’s necessary.
If you’re parsing an incoming request body and there are no extras in the body. Such as “body” parameters. Then just pass through those fields into your model when they’re received instead of writing them down directly into memory somewhere. You’ll save memory space while also reducing complexity. Since all values will be pre-populated when they’re accessed later on during processing logic within models themselves.
Don’t Allow Over-Posting or Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
CSRF is a form of attack that forces a user to execute unwanted actions on a web application in which they’re currently authenticated. CSRF attacks are possible when an application takes actions based on input from a user within a trusted domain without requiring the user to prove their identity.
For example, imagine you have an application that allows users to order flowers online and has been hacked. So that when they make an order it shows up as originating from your site instead of theirs. Perhaps because someone stole your users’ credentials. If this happens then any other site could see all orders sent by this account as coming from yours and might try accessing them directly (even though they weren’t actually intended for them).
Version Your API Gateway
Versioning is important for API gateways because it allows you to keep your application stable while adding new features. Versioning can also help you change the API without breaking existing calls. Which would be quite a task if you did not version your APIs.
In addition to versioning, there are other best practices that can help make sure your web API gateway is secure and performant:
- Use HTTPS: This is a no-brainer. Your API gateway should be using HTTPS to encrypt communication between clients and the server.
- Add authentication: Authentication ensures that only authorized users can access the API, which will protect against malicious attacks.
Check for Malformed JSON
You should check your incoming requests at an early stage in the process, and reject malformed inputs if they exist. This will help prevent errors in parsing, which can cause unexpected behavior.
You should also validate the format of your data before attempting to parse it. For example, if you are expecting a JSON object but receive a string instead. This is a clear sign that something has gone wrong with the request. The same goes for arrays: If you’re expecting an array of objects but get just one object (or vice versa), then there’s clearly been an error in transmission somewhere along the way.
Have a Well-Documented Onboarding Process
The onboarding process is where you get new members of your API Gateway community to get up and running. It’s important to have an effective onboarding process. As it helps ensure that your users are able to use their products as quickly as possible. This can help reduce support calls and improve customer satisfaction.
There are many different ways to go about this. But one thing that will help you is if you document everything in a well-organized way. So that anyone who needs access can find what they need easily. This includes documentation for things. Like how to create an application, how to build out test cases or use code samples etc.
A Web API gateway is an important part of any complete Web API strategy
A Web API gateway is an important part of any complete Web API strategy. They can be used to enforce security, rate limiting, and other policies on your APIs by intercepting requests and responding with conflicting responses.
They’re usually implemented as a proxy layer in front of the API. You may also choose to use multiple gateways so that your users don’t have access only through one single place. For example, if there are two separate APIs for managing user accounts and purchases on your site. Then it would make sense for them both to have their own separate gateways sitting between them.
Conclusion
The key takeaway from this article is that a web API gateway is a great tool for building out your microservices architecture. While it’s important to be aware of the best practices described in this article. We encourage you to take the time to really think about how your architecture can benefit from using a web API gateway. Ultimately, the best way to decide if using a web API gateway is right for you is by testing it out in production and seeing how things go!
