Title

AWS re:Invent 2023 - I didn’t know Amazon API Gateway did that (SVS323)

Summary

Eric Johnson, a principal DA for serverless at AWS, shares his expertise on Amazon API Gateway.
He discusses the challenges and complexities of API Gateway and how he learned and taught it through his series "Happy Little APIs."
The session covers what an API is, the importance of API Gateway, and various integration patterns.
Eric explains the different types of APIs you can build with API Gateway: regional, edge-optimized, and private APIs.
He delves into the protocols supported by API Gateway, including REST and WebSockets, and other protocols handled by services like AppSync and IoT Core.
The session also touches on the two types of API Gateway APIs: REST API and HTTP API.
Eric discusses the importance of authorization, caching, throttling, stages, logging, canary releases, and identity-based policies.
He emphasizes the use of OpenAPI for building and exporting API configurations and the power of validation to prevent unnecessary Lambda invocations.
The session concludes with resources for further learning and a call to action to explore serverless land for patterns and templates.

API Gateway is a critical component for managing APIs, offering a range of features that go beyond simply being the "front door" to services.
The session highlights the importance of understanding and utilizing the built-in features of API Gateway to improve security, performance, and manageability.
Eric's personal journey with API Gateway underscores the learning curve associated with the service and the resources available to master it.
The discussion on integration types and the use of VTL (Velocity Templating Language) suggests that API Gateway can be used for more than just routing; it can transform requests and responses, reducing the need for compute resources.
The emphasis on logging and metrics indicates that monitoring is a key aspect of maintaining a healthy API ecosystem.
The session suggests a preference for using separate AWS accounts for different environments (dev, beta, production) instead of relying on API Gateway stages, which can be complex to manage.
The use of OpenAPI for building and exporting API configurations is recommended for its ease of use and ability to convert between Swagger and OpenAPI.
The mention of validation as a tool to prevent unnecessary backend processing is a valuable insight for optimizing serverless applications.
The resources provided at the end of the session, including serverless land, offer attendees a way to continue learning and applying best practices for serverless architecture and API management.