API Gateway Overview

Amazon API Gateway is a fully managed service that makes it easy for developers to create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale.
APIs act as the "front door" for applications to access data, business logic, or functionality from your backend services.
Using API Gateway, you can create RESTful APIs and WebSocket APIs that enable real-time two-way communication applications.
API Gateway supports containerized and serverless workloads, as well as web applications.
API Gateway has no minimum fees or start-up costs.
- You pay for the API calls you receive and the amount of data transferred out.

Integrations

After setting up an API method, you must integrate it with an endpoint in the backend.
- A backend endpoint is also referred to as an integration endpoint and can be a Lambda function, an HTTP webpage, or an AWS service action.
Lambda Function
- You can integrate an API method with a Lambda function using Lambda proxy integration or Lambda non-proxy (custom) integration.
HTTP
- This type of integration lets an API expose HTTP endpoints in the backend.
AWS Service
- This type of integration lets an API expose AWS service actions.

An API endpoint type refers to the hostname of the API.
Edge-optimized API endpoints
- This is the best for geographically distributed clients.
  - API requests are routed to the nearest CloudFront Point of Presence (POP).
- This is the default endpoint type for API Gateway REST APIs.
Regional API endpoints
- This is intended for clients in the same region.
- When a client running on an EC2 instance calls an API in the same region, or when an API is intended to serve a small number of clients with high demands, a regional API reduces connection overhead.
Private API endpoints
- This is an API endpoint that can only be accessed from your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) using an interface VPC endpoint, which is an endpoint network interface (ENI) that you create in your VPC.

Last updated 4 years ago

Was this helpful?

Integrations

After setting up an API method, you must integrate it with an endpoint in the backend.

A backend endpoint is also referred to as an integration endpoint and can be a Lambda function, an HTTP webpage, or an AWS service action.

Lambda Function

You can integrate an API method with a Lambda function using Lambda proxy integration or Lambda non-proxy (custom) integration.

HTTP

AWS Service

Endpoint Types

An API endpoint type refers to the hostname of the API.

Edge-optimized API endpoints

This is the best for geographically distributed clients.
- API requests are routed to the nearest CloudFront Point of Presence (POP).
This is the default endpoint type for API Gateway REST APIs.

Regional API endpoints

This is intended for clients in the same region.
When a client running on an EC2 instance calls an API in the same region, or when an API is intended to serve a small number of clients with high demands, a regional API reduces connection overhead.

Private API endpoints

This is an API endpoint that can only be accessed from your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) using an interface VPC endpoint, which is an endpoint network interface (ENI) that you create in your VPC.