Components of API Management

What is API Management?

APIM is made up of the following components:

API gateway

The API gateway is the endpoint that:

• Accepts API calls and routes them to the backend.
• Verifies API keys, JWT tokens, certificates, and other credentials.
• Enforces usage quotas and rate limits.
• Transforms your API on the fly without code modifications.
• Caches backend responses where set up.
• Logs call metadata for analytics purposes.

Azure portal

The Azure portal is the administrative interface where you set up your API program. You can also use it to:

• Define or import API schema.
• Package APIs into products.
• Set up policies such as quotas or transformations on the APIs.
• Get insights from analytics.
• Manage users.

Developer portal

The Developer portal serves as the main web presence for developers. From here they can:

• Read API documentation.
• Try out an API via the interactive console.
• Create an account and subscribe to get API keys.
• Access analytics on their own usage.

Note that the developer portal is NOT available on the consumption tier