APISIX Has a Free API — Cloud-Native API Gateway With Plugin Ecosystem

#devops #api #cloudnative #opensource

APISIX: The Apache API Gateway

Apache APISIX is a cloud-native API gateway with 80+ plugins. Rate limiting, auth, observability, traffic management — all configurable via REST API without restarts.

Why APISIX

80+ built-in plugins
Dynamic config — no restarts
Dashboard UI
Multi-protocol: HTTP, gRPC, WebSocket, MQTT
Lua/Wasm plugin development

The Free API

# Create a route
curl http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/1 \
  -H "X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1" \
  -X PUT -d "{\"uri\": \"/api/*\", \"upstream\": {\"type\": \"roundrobin\", \"nodes\": {\"127.0.0.1:8080\": 1}}}"

# Add rate limiting plugin
curl http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/1 \
  -H "X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1" \
  -X PATCH -d "{\"plugins\": {\"limit-count\": {\"count\": 100, \"time_window\": 60, \"rejected_code\": 429}}}"

# Add JWT auth
curl http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/1 \
  -X PATCH -H "X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1" \
  -d "{\"plugins\": {\"jwt-auth\": {}}}"

# Get route info
curl http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/1 \
  -H "X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1"

# List all routes
curl http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes \
  -H "X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1"

Popular Plugins

Plugin	What It Does
limit-count	Rate limiting
jwt-auth	JWT authentication
prometheus	Metrics export
cors	Cross-origin handling
proxy-rewrite	URL rewriting
traffic-split	Canary releases
fault-injection	Chaos testing

Real-World Use Case

An API team managing 200 endpoints with nginx configs. Each change required restart and testing. APISIX: dynamic route creation via API, plugins added without restart, canary releases per route. Deploy time: minutes to seconds.

Quick Start

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apache/apisix-docker/master/example/docker-compose.yml -o docker-compose.yml
docker-compose up -d

Resources

Need API monitoring data? Check out my tools on Apify or email spinov001@gmail.com for custom solutions.

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