An API Gateway acts as a single entry point for all your backend services. In a Spring Boot application, you often have multiple services handling different tasks. Without an API Gateway, clients must communicate directly with each service, which can be confusing and hard to manage. By using an API Gateway, you simplify this process: clients send requests to one place, and the gateway routes them to the right service. This approach improves security, makes it easier to manage requests, and helps you add features like authentication, logging, or rate-limiting in one central location.

Basic Steps to Set Up an API Gateway in Spring Boot

Setting up an API Gateway in Spring Boot is a straightforward process when you use Spring Cloud Gateway. This tool helps you manage and route requests to different services in your system.

Key Concepts

• API Gateway: a single entry point for all client requests, forwarding them to appropriate backend services;
• Routing: the process of matching incoming requests to backend services based on rules you define;
• Filters: tools to modify requests and responses as they pass through the gateway, such as adding headers or logging information.

Configuration Steps

1. Add the spring-cloud-starter-gateway dependency to your project;
2. Configure routes in the application.yml or application.properties file;
3. Start your Spring Boot application and test the routing to ensure requests are forwarded correctly.

After these steps, your API Gateway will be ready to direct traffic and apply basic rules to incoming requests.