Google Cloud API Gateway Essentials | Generated by AI
Cloud Endpoints is Google Cloud’s API management system that helps you develop, deploy, protect, and monitor APIs. It acts as a distributed API gateway that sits in front of your backend services.
What Cloud Endpoints Does
Cloud Endpoints provides a set of tools and services for managing APIs across their entire lifecycle. When you deploy an API with Endpoints, you get authentication, monitoring, logging, and API key validation without having to write this infrastructure code yourself.
The service works by deploying a proxy (based on Envoy or the Extensible Service Proxy) alongside your API. This proxy intercepts incoming requests, validates them according to your configuration, and forwards legitimate requests to your backend.
Key Features
Authentication and Security: Endpoints supports multiple authentication methods including API keys, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), Firebase Authentication, Auth0, and Google authentication. You can define which authentication methods are required for different API methods.
API Management: You define your API surface using an OpenAPI specification (for REST APIs) or gRPC service definitions. Endpoints uses these specifications to validate incoming requests and generate client libraries and documentation.
Monitoring and Logging: Integration with Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging gives you visibility into API traffic, latency, error rates, and other metrics. You can see which methods are called most frequently, track performance over time, and set up alerts.
Rate Limiting and Quotas: You can set quotas on API usage per user, per API key, or globally. This protects your backend from being overwhelmed and lets you implement tiered service levels.
Developer Portal: Endpoints can generate a developer portal where API consumers can explore your API documentation, try methods interactively, and manage their API keys.
Supported Platforms
Cloud Endpoints works with several Google Cloud compute platforms:
- App Engine: Tight integration with both standard and flexible environments
- Cloud Run: Deploy containerized APIs with automatic scaling
- Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE): Run APIs in Kubernetes clusters
- Compute Engine: Deploy on virtual machines
You can also use Endpoints OpenAPI to manage APIs running outside Google Cloud, though with some limitations.
API Types
Cloud Endpoints for OpenAPI: Manages REST APIs defined using the OpenAPI specification (versions 2.0 or 3.0). This is the most flexible option and works across different platforms.
Cloud Endpoints for gRPC: Designed specifically for gRPC APIs, using protocol buffers for service definitions. This offers better performance for service-to-service communication.
Cloud Endpoints Frameworks: A legacy option for Python and Java APIs on App Engine that uses annotations rather than separate configuration files. Google recommends migrating to the OpenAPI or gRPC options for new projects.
How It Works
The typical flow involves defining your API specification, deploying it to Endpoints, then deploying your backend service configured to work with the Endpoints proxy. When a client makes a request, the proxy validates authentication, checks quotas, logs the request, and forwards it to your backend if everything checks out. The backend processes the request and returns a response through the proxy back to the client.
The configuration is versioned, so you can deploy new versions of your API configuration and roll back if needed. This separation between API configuration and backend implementation gives you flexibility in how you manage and evolve your APIs.
Pricing
Cloud Endpoints itself doesn’t have a separate charge—you pay for the underlying infrastructure (like the compute resources running your API and proxy) plus standard charges for Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring based on the volume of logs and metrics generated.
This makes Endpoints particularly attractive compared to third-party API management solutions, since you’re mainly paying for what you already use rather than adding a significant new line item to your cloud bill.