Azure API Management: What Is It and How Does It Work?

The digital world depends on APIs or application programming interfaces. They enable data sharing and app interaction. Azure API Management is a Microsoft Azure solution. It lets organizations create, publish, secure, and analyze APIs. This blog will explore what Azure API Management is, what its key features are, and how it works.

What is Azure API Management?

It is a cloud-based service that enables organizations to manage their APIs securely and efficiently. By serving as a gateway between developers and backend services, it enables businesses to make their services accessible to both internal and external customers while still keeping control over security, access, and usage data.

Top Features of Azure API Management

API Gateway: It is essentially a gateway to APIs. It responds to customer inquiries, directs them to the relevant backend services, and guarantees the security and compliance of the APIs.

Analytics and Monitoring: The platform provides detailed analytics that helps organizations understand how their APIs are being used. Users can track performance metrics, and usage statistics and identify any issues that may arise.

Rate limiting and throttling: To prevent abuse and ensure fair usage, Azure API management allows organizations to set limits on the number of API calls that can be made in a given period.

Security: With features like OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and JWT (JSON Web Token) authentication, Azure API Management offers strong security options to protect APIs from unauthorized access.

Developer Portal: Azure provides a customizable developer portal where API consumers can search for APIs, read documentation, and obtain access keys. This portal enhances the developer experience and facilitates better collaboration.

Transformation and Enhancements: The service allows users to change and enrich API requests and responses, enabling integration with different systems without changing backend services.

How does Azure API Management Work?

Creating APIs: Organizations can create APIs in It by importing existing APIs or creating new ones from scratch. This entails specifying the endpoints, request/response formats, and API structure.

Publishing APIs: Once APIs are created, they can be published on the developer portal. Organizations can control who has access to specific APIs through subscription tiers.

Securing APIs: By implementing various security measures such as IP filtering, authentication, and authorization, organizations can ensure that only authorized users can access their APIs.

Monitoring and Analytics: Azure API Management provides real-time analytics and monitoring capabilities. Companies may continuously improve their APIs by monitoring metrics like request volume, response time, and error rates.

Managing traffic: The Service includes features to manage traffic, such as caching responses and enforcing rate limits, which helps maintain performance and reliability.

Versioning: Azure API Management allows organizations to manage multiple versions of their APIs, enabling backward compatibility while introducing new features and improvements.

Key components of Azure APIM

Backend API

This refers to the API endpoints provided by applications built and hosted using different platforms. For example, a web API built with .NET Core and hosted on an on-premises server acts as a backend API.

API Gateway

The API Gateway acts as a layer of abstraction between API clients and the backend infrastructure. It hides the complex details of the API’s development, code structure, and hosting environment. This simplification allows for easy management and monitoring of the API without exposing unnecessary internal details. The API Gateway handles all incoming and outgoing requests for the backend API. Azure offers managed API Gateways that connect to your API endpoints.

Azure offers two types of gateways: managed and self-hosted.

• Managed API Gateway: Fully maintained and managed by Azure.
• Self-hosted Gateway: Lets you deploy and control your own gateway in a container in your environment. This option is suitable for scenarios where you need enhanced security, regional proximity to backend APIs, or greater control over traffic.

Regardless of the type, the gateway processes requests and responses, integrates with Azure monitoring, captures logs and metrics, and enforces policy rules.

API Management Plane

This component provides administrative tools to configure API endpoints, set up API service instances, add or remove policies, and use templates to create endpoints. By default, the management plane provides full control over API administration. It also exposes REST APIs, which enable programmatic management using ARM templates, SDKs, PowerShell, or Visual Studio.

Developer Portal

The Developer Portal is a customizable, auto-generated website that lists all published APIs along with the documentation required for their use. It also includes a console for directly testing API endpoints. The portal serves as a powerful tool, allowing developers and guest users to easily log in, subscribe, and access available APIs.

Benefits of Azure API Management for App Developers

For app developers, Azure API Management provides easy API access and simplifies the integration of APIs into applications. It enables developers to:

• Access API documentation: The developer portal delivers comprehensive documentation for each API, including details about API endpoints, supported operations, request and response structures, and any required parameters or headers. Developers can refer to this documentation to understand API usage and quickly resolve any issues they encounter.
• Test API: The developer portal comes with a built-in test console, which allows developers to send test requests and monitor API responses. This feature helps verify that the API is working correctly and helps troubleshoot any issues that appear during development.
• Run analytics: Azure API Management provides multiple tools to monitor and analyze API performance, usage, and errors. Developers can track API usage, detect any performance issues, and gather insights from usage data. This analysis helps developers understand API behavior and identify areas for optimization and improvement.

API Management with Togwe

We offer the best quality and secure API Management services at Togwe. We aim to provide seamless integration with all the assurance of solid performance for users. The security of Your APIs is kept on the top level, Clients can confidently open their services to users and be able to control access.

We offer world-class API management solutions to facilitate the changing demands of their users and ensure easy access for their services.

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