Commerce API Gateway

Overview

An API gateway sits between storefront clients and the set of backend commerce services, providing a single entry point for authentication, rate limiting, caching, and request routing. In composable commerce architectures, the gateway aggregates APIs from disparate services (catalog, cart, search, CMS) so the frontend makes one or a few calls rather than dozens. This skill covers building a GraphQL Federation gateway with Apollo Router, a REST aggregation BFF, and applying cross-cutting concerns (auth, rate limiting, observability) at the gateway layer.

When to Use This Skill

• When your storefront makes 10+ API calls per page load from different services
• When you need to enforce authentication and authorization consistently across all commerce APIs
• When different teams own different services and you need a contract between the frontend and backend
• When you want to apply rate limiting, circuit breakers, or caching without modifying each service
• When you need a single GraphQL schema that spans catalog, inventory, CMS, and personalization data

Prerequisites & Platform Notes

This skill is written for custom/headless storefronts (Node.js, Python, or similar backend). The code examples use TypeScript/Node.js and can be adapted to any stack.