API Gateway Selective Exposure via Metadata Filtering
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Solution Overview
Problem
Microservices architectures face challenges in dynamically and efficiently exposing Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in a scalable manner, requiring a gateway that can transparently route requests and perform transformations while allowing selective exposure based on metadata filtering.
Innovation Solution
An API gateway that receives metadata from microservices, selectively exposes APIs, routes user requests to intended microservices without validation, and performs transformations, using filtering tags to manage which APIs are accessible, ensuring minimal modifications to existing microservices and gateway infrastructure.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If a gateway interface is introduced to provide a single interface for multiple microservices, then ease of operation is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an API gateway as an intermediary component that sits between users and multiple microservices. The gateway receives user requests, routes them to the appropriate microservice, and returns responses. This mediator approach consolidates the interface complexity into a single point while maintaining simplicity for end users, directly resolving the contradiction between ease of operation and device complexity.
2Reliability
If validation logic is replicated in the gateway interface, then reliability is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts validation logic from the gateway interface and places it directly within the individual microservices. Each microservice performs its own validation on incoming requests, eliminating the need for the gateway to replicate validation logic. This extraction approach maintains reliability through distributed validation while reducing gateway complexity.
3Adaptability or versatility
If all APIs from microservices are exposed via the gateway, then adaptability is improved, but loss of information increases due to exposure of internal APIs
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by differentiating between public APIs and internal APIs at the gateway level. The gateway selectively exposes only public APIs to users while keeping internal APIs hidden. This selective exposure approach maintains adaptability for legitimate use cases while preventing information loss by protecting internal system details from external access.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for selectively exposing Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) dynamically and in a scalable manner include, when a new API is exposed in a microservice, making it accessible via a gateway if it is indicated to be exposed. The present disclosure focused on exposing a range of services behind the API gateway in a scalable, easy to use manner. The present disclosure includes an API gateway that supports a new microservice easily and efficiently as long as it provides metadata. The API gateway dynamically decides which APIs will be exposed via the gateway with filtering per service. Also, the API gateway routes any request made by a user to the gateway back to the intended microservice in a transparent fashion, as well as performing any additional transformations of the request before sending it back to the microservice.