Backends For Frontends BFFs or API Gateway

2
votes

In a micro-services architecture we can have:

  1. A single API gateway providing a single API for all clients.

  2. A single API gateway providing an API for each kind of client.

  3. A per-client API gateway providing each client with an API. which is the BFF pattern.

Netflix uses the second style Inside the Netflix API Redesign. we can surely say that they have created a smart-piece of middleware in their architecture that takes on multiple responsibilities. But how much work this single API back-end can handle, it seems that it can become a bottleneck so easily.

So my question is what are the benefits of choosing the single API to handle requests for more than 1000 clients instead of creating an API Gateway specifically designed to one type of clients? Aren't they facing many challenges to manage and maintain this complex piece?

1
microservices

1 Answers

3
votes

It all depends where your end users are, in case of Netflix, they have differnt types of clients, web/mobile/streaming sticks/bluray players/what not, while web (updated to latest all the time), mobile (updated to latest eventually), bluray player with pre-installed app for example may never get updated.

And you have to version your apis accordingly for each platform and maintain them based on client update cycle for backward compatibility. If you have too many variations in a single api it will be hard to maintain instead it is easier to write an api for each type of client. Unless you have real need for #3 and have enough resources to develop for each type of client I wouldn't jump into it, as you have to maintain many variations of api for the same purpose.

I would start small with #1.