GENERAL PROJECT
API Gateway
Backend Routing and Integration Experiment
Gateway experiment for routing requests, middleware, validation, proxying, and service boundaries.
PLANNED PROJECT
Learn the role of a gateway by routing and coordinating requests instead of building another CRUD service. The implementation is planned.
API Gateway
Learn the role of a gateway by routing and coordinating requests instead of building another CRUD service. The implementation is planned.Learn the role of a gateway by routing and coordinating requests instead of building another CRUD service. The implementation is planned.
Purpose & Learning Objectives
Why this project exists and what the implementation should teach.Purpose / Learning
Purpose
Learn the role of a gateway by routing and coordinating requests instead of building another CRUD service.
Learning Objectives
- Route incoming requests to defined downstream services.
- Apply middleware consistently.
- Validate and normalize request metadata.
- Handle upstream failures and timeouts.
- Understand proxy boundaries and service composition.
- Compare gateway responsibilities with the TypeScript API Service.
Technology Plan
Current, planned, legacy, or candidate technologies for this project.Implementation Scope
Planned behaviors, architecture decisions, and evidence this project should produce.
Routing
Map incoming paths to service destinations.- Route table.
- Method handling.
- Path/query forwarding.
Middleware
Centralize concerns that should not be repeated in every service.- Logging.
- Validation.
- Request IDs.
- Error formatting.
Failure behavior
Make upstream problems visible and controlled.- Timeouts.
- Unavailable service.
- Invalid upstream response.
Comparison
Document what belongs in a gateway versus a domain API.- Gateway: routing/cross-cutting concerns.
- Service: domain rules/persistence.
Project Notes
Implementation context, boundaries, and later expansion.Project Notes
Framework Decision
Express and Fastify are candidates; the learning objective matters more than framework branding.
Relationship
Use the TypeScript API Service later as one possible downstream service.