1 00:00:03,090 --> 00:00:09,390 So let's understand what all these options on the left here do, specifically usage plan and so on 2 00:00:10,290 --> 00:00:14,520 For usage plan API keys, to understand these menu items, 3 00:00:14,520 --> 00:00:18,760 it's important to understand how your API may be used. 4 00:00:18,870 --> 00:00:24,510 You can create your own API for your own applications, like we do in this course. 5 00:00:24,630 --> 00:00:25,900 We have some web app, 6 00:00:25,980 --> 00:00:31,140 we will have one at the end of the course with which we want to connect to a back-end because our web 7 00:00:31,140 --> 00:00:33,320 app happens to be a single page application, 8 00:00:33,420 --> 00:00:37,530 so it runs on a static server, executes no server-side code, 9 00:00:37,530 --> 00:00:43,870 so we need a back-end to connect to to store data in a database, fetch data and so on. 10 00:00:43,890 --> 00:00:51,000 Now if we have our own API with our own front-end, API keys aren't really interesting to us because we control 11 00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:57,240 everything. We create that API, we deploy it on a stage here and we get this URL which we can use 12 00:00:57,240 --> 00:00:59,040 in our own application. 13 00:00:59,040 --> 00:01:04,220 Now theoretically if other people were to inspect the source code of our app, they could steal this URL 14 00:01:04,230 --> 00:01:09,870 and they could try using it on their own but that wouldn't really help them because the API is only 15 00:01:09,870 --> 00:01:13,480 used by us and therefore, pretty much suited to our application 16 00:01:13,620 --> 00:01:18,090 and if we use authentication which we probably do and we will learn about this in this course, there's 17 00:01:18,090 --> 00:01:20,210 even less people can do with that link. 18 00:01:20,550 --> 00:01:27,390 Now API keys are interesting if you plan on creating an API which is shared with other developers, 19 00:01:27,390 --> 00:01:34,510 so not with users of your app but with other developers creating their own apps. 20 00:01:34,530 --> 00:01:36,600 Think about the Google Maps API, 21 00:01:36,870 --> 00:01:41,480 they have an API where you can send coordinates and get back address information. 22 00:01:41,760 --> 00:01:47,770 Now if you want to use that, you have to register on Google and you will get an API key by them. 23 00:01:48,110 --> 00:01:54,460 It's that key which you then have to pass with any request you send to the API because you identify yourself 24 00:01:54,540 --> 00:01:55,440 with that key 25 00:01:55,530 --> 00:02:00,720 and Google can also track your usage of the API and possibly limit you if you exceed your limits or 26 00:02:00,720 --> 00:02:01,990 anything like that 27 00:02:02,270 --> 00:02:04,650 and you can do the same here in API Gateway. 28 00:02:04,650 --> 00:02:11,190 You can create API keys here, sign them any customer name and of course, there are also ways of automatically 29 00:02:11,190 --> 00:02:15,940 generating them if you have like an automatic system where people can register for your API 30 00:02:16,140 --> 00:02:22,830 but let's do it manually and you will get such an API key then, here. That's just a random key and the 31 00:02:22,830 --> 00:02:29,090 customer for which you generated the key can now send to this key with requests to identify themselves, 32 00:02:29,100 --> 00:02:34,490 Ww'll soon learn that you can indeed block requests which are sent without API keys. 33 00:02:34,530 --> 00:02:41,940 You can even set up usage plans to restrict the usage of your API by certain keys, 34 00:02:42,090 --> 00:02:47,750 so you could assign a usage plan to this API key and say you are only allowed to access my API, let's 35 00:02:47,820 --> 00:02:51,980 say 1000 times per second, per minute or anything like that. 36 00:02:52,020 --> 00:02:55,100 This is what you can do with API keys and usage plans, 37 00:02:55,140 --> 00:02:59,680 it's important if you plan on exposing your API to other developers, 38 00:02:59,760 --> 00:03:05,790 it's not important if you do what we do in this course and you use your API only on your own. 39 00:03:05,910 --> 00:03:07,920 Now what about the other options? 40 00:03:08,220 --> 00:03:14,040 If you have a look at custom domain names or specifically if you have a look at the domain our first 41 00:03:14,040 --> 00:03:15,530 API is hosted on, 42 00:03:15,720 --> 00:03:21,030 it should be pretty clear what custom domain names does. It allows you to connect your own domain which 43 00:03:21,030 --> 00:03:29,280 you own to your API, so that you don't have these generic AWS URL which works fine but your own 44 00:03:29,370 --> 00:03:34,500 domain, which might especially be important if you do indeed plan to expose your API to other developers 45 00:03:34,500 --> 00:03:36,870 too. Client certificate is 46 00:03:36,880 --> 00:03:42,690 important if you plan on forwarding incoming requests to yet another HTTP endpoint 47 00:03:42,870 --> 00:03:50,130 and on that other HTTP endpoint, you want to validate that the request this endpoint gets indeed 48 00:03:50,130 --> 00:03:53,160 stems from your API Gateway API 49 00:03:53,430 --> 00:04:00,210 and with a client certificate, you can generate a certificate which proves this to your final API 50 00:04:00,210 --> 00:04:02,580 endpoint on a different API, 51 00:04:02,790 --> 00:04:08,690 not something we'll look into this course. And on settings, you can simply manage the roles, the 52 00:04:08,730 --> 00:04:16,680 permissions this service has because keep in mind, by default, each AWS service has no permissions at 53 00:04:16,680 --> 00:04:17,210 all, 54 00:04:17,250 --> 00:04:21,220 you have to give permissions so that the services are able to do something 55 00:04:21,330 --> 00:04:27,240 and if you want to generate log files for API Gateway for example, you would have to give it the 56 00:04:27,300 --> 00:04:29,970 right permissions and you can do that here. 57 00:04:30,360 --> 00:04:31,770 So that's the options here, 58 00:04:31,890 --> 00:04:35,160 not something we will work on in this course. For us, 59 00:04:35,160 --> 00:04:38,750 the API specific items here are more interesting. 60 00:04:38,880 --> 00:04:44,200 So let's dive into that and understand how an API really works in a high level in the next lectures.