Fur-ocious Fun: How to Use AWS API Gateway as a Cat Facts Proxy was initially published on Saturday January 07 2023 on the Tech Dev Blog. For the latest up-to-date content, fresh out of the oven, visit https://techdevblog.io and subscribe to our newsletter!

Welcome to our tutorial on using AWS API Gateway as a proxy for the Cat Facts API! Are you ready to learn how to leverage the power of the cloud to bring some feline fun to your application? Let's dive in!

First things first, you'll need to have the AWS CDK (Cloud Development Kit) installed on your system. If you don't have it already, head over to the AWS documentation to get it set up.

Next, you'll want to create a new CDK project for your Cat Facts API proxy. You can do this by running the following command in your terminal:

cdk init --language=typescript

This will create a new directory for your project and set up some basic files and dependencies. Now it's time to add the AWS API Gateway HTTP Proxy library to your project. You can do this by running the following command in your terminal:

npm install @aws-cdk/aws-apigateway-http-proxy

With the library installed, it's time to start coding! Open up your index.ts file and import the following modules at the top of the file:

import * as cdk from 'aws-cdk-lib';
import * as apigateway from '@aws-cdk/aws-apigateway';
import * as proxy from '@aws-cdk/aws-apigateway-http-proxy';

Next, we'll define our Cat Facts API endpoint URL as a constant. Replace YOUR_API_ENDPOINT_HERE with the actual endpoint URL for the Cat Facts API:

const CAT_FACTS_API_ENDPOINT = 'YOUR_API_ENDPOINT_HERE';

Now it's time to create a new API Gateway resource using the apigateway.HttpApi class. Add the following code to your index.ts file:

const api = new apigateway.HttpApi(this, 'CatFactsApi', {
  defaultIntegration: new apigateway.MockIntegration({
    integrationResponses: [{
      statusCode: '200',
      responseParameters: {
        'integration.response.body.message': '"Hello from the mock integration!"',
      },
    }],
  }),
});

This creates a new HTTP API with a mock integration, which will allow us to test our proxy without actually calling the Cat Facts API.

Now let's create a new resource for our Cat Facts endpoint. Add the following code to your index.ts file:

const catFactsResource = api.addResource('cat-facts');

With our resource created, it's time to add a proxy integration to it. This is where the magic happens! Add the following code to your index.ts file:

const catFactsProxy = new proxy.HttpProxyIntegration({
  integrationHttpMethod: 'ANY',
  options: {
    passthroughBehavior: apigateway.PassthroughBehavior.WHEN_NO_MATCH,
    integrationResponses: [{
      statusCode: '200',
    }],
  },
  uri: CAT_FACTS_API_ENDPOINT,
});
catFactsResource.addMethod('ANY', catFactsProxy);

This code creates a new HttpProxyIntegration and assigns it to our catFactsResource. The HttpProxyIntegration allows us to forward any incoming request to the Cat Facts API endpoint and return the response to the client.

Now let's deploy our API Gateway. Add the following code to your index.ts file:

api.deploymentStage.addCorsPreflight({
    allowHeaders: [''],
    allowMethods: ['GET'],
    allowOrigins: [''],
});

This code sets up CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) for our API Gateway, allowing it to be accessed from any origin.

Finally, let's deploy our stack to AWS by running the following command in your terminal:

cdk deploy

This will create all the necessary resources in your AWS account and deploy your API Gateway.

And that's it! You now have a fully functional Cat Facts API proxy using AWS API Gateway and the AWS CDK. You can test it out by sending a GET request to the API Gateway endpoint, which should return a random cat fact from the Cat Facts API.

We hope you enjoyed this tutorial and learned something new about using AWS API Gateway as a proxy. Happy coding!

Fur-ocious Fun: How to Use AWS API Gateway as a Cat Facts Proxy was initially published on Saturday January 07 2023 on the Tech Dev Blog. For the latest up-to-date content, fresh out of the oven, visit https://techdevblog.io and subscribe to our newsletter!