Understanding Difference Between Cloud Endpoints and API Gateway

In this lab, you will be deploying your APIs on Cloud Endpoints and API Gateway and then securing both of the APIs. Both these services are used to create and manage the APIs but API Gateway is newer.

How is Cloud Endpoints different from API Gateway?

Cloud Endpoints is a user-managed service whereas API Gateway is a fully managed service.

Both support the same OpenAPI definition format. The main difference is that API Gateway can route a request to multiple backends, but Cloud Endpoints can route traffic only to a single backend. API Gateway can do anything that Cloud Endpoints can do but vice versa is not always true.

Another notable difference is the processing of the host property in Open API definitions:

• In Cloud Endpoints, it is mandatory and is set to the hostname part of the URL. For e.g. .appspot.com
• In API Gateway, it is not mandatory, the host property can be deleted or left blank or it is set to the DNS Name of the deployed API.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this lab you will be able to:

• Deploy and Secure your APIs on Cloud Endpoints
• Deploy and Secure your APIs on API Gateway

Intended Audience

This lab is intended for:

• Software Developers
• QA Engineers
• API Developers

Prerequisites

You should possess:

• A basic understanding of Python
• A basic understanding of JSON or YAML format is helpful but not required

Updates

December 6th, 2023 - Addressed user ban issue and promptly added a warning

August 26th, 2022 - Resolved an issue causing the test application to not enable the sign in button

May 26th, 2022 - Correct error within VM instance