API Middleware use cases

What is API Middleware?

Is a component that participates in the processing of an HTTP Request and the consequent generation of a Response. It acts as a mediator between the client or consumer and the software application service. There are multiple types of middlewares depending on which app they connect to. We will focus on API Middleware.

A middleware

• can access your HTTP request and its related information like headers, method, body, parameters, etc
• sends (or not) the request to the backend application for further processing through the request handler
• return a valid HTTP response to the client or consumer.
• performs actions before or/and after execution of the request handler, since is part of the processing pipeline, allowing flexible compute capabilities.

API Middleware use cases

• Request/response manipulation (e.g. add headers, modify the body, etc)
• Session
• Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)
• Firewall
• Authentication
• Authorization
• Validation
• Sanitize
• Caching
• Logging and monitoring
• Error handling and exception management
• Content negotiation (e.g. handling different formats for the same resource)
• Rate limiting and Throttling
• Honeypot
• Security (e.g. CSRF protection, Same-Site Cookie)
• Internationalization and localization
• API Versioning