APIFrontends
APIFrontends are a design approach in which a dedicated frontend layer exposes APIs to clients, serving as the public face of an ecosystem of backend services. This layer can present tailored API surfaces for different clients such as web apps, mobile apps, or partner integrations, and may include data shaping, request orchestration, and protocol translation to reduce client complexity.
Architecturally, APIFrontends commonly involve a combination of an API gateway or edge proxy, a backend-for-frontend (BFF)
Technologies associated with APIFrontends span REST, GraphQL, and gRPC, as well as OpenAPI specifications for client
Use cases include delivering mobile-optimized responses, reducing over-fetching, integrating partner APIs, and enabling per-client or per-device
See also: API gateway, Backend-for-Frontend, GraphQL, API management.