CODEWITHSUNDEEP
databaseapiweb-services
Birdman
Birdman

Reputation: 1524

Proper way for API to interact with database?

I'm trying to host a database (on either AWS or Heroku) to store data from my web app. I also need to create an API to interact with the database. Basically, like this picture from Google.

enter image description here Image source: https://dzone.com/articles/an-introduction-to-restful-apis

What I'm trying to figure out:

Is the API and database typically hosted separately? Or are they often hosted together? I'm not sure if the API and DB are together 1 component (with sub components being API and DB), or if they are 2 separate standalone components.

If they are 1 component and they can be hosted together, then I believe you can use something like Express.js for your API which can query the database and respond to HTTP requests from the website.

If they are 2 separately hosted components, I feel that means I have to have 2 APIs, unless my API can directly talk to the database (I'm not sure if this is proper). So I would need my API to talk to some server side technology (PHP, Java, etc.) which would then query the database and return result to the API. So basically my API is talking to an API which is talking to the database. I'm not sure if this is over complicating things, but it sure seems like it.

I'm trying to clarify how this process works.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2256

Answers (1)

Quentin
Quentin

Reputation: 944073

Is the API and database typically hosted separately? Or are they often hosted together?

Since the API service needs to make lots of requests to the database, you want the minimum network lag possible between them.

So generally they should be hosted together. What that means depends on the style of hosting. Using the same cloud service makes sense if you are using something like AWS Lambda. Otherwise using the same machine for both the database and HTTP service until you scale to the point where you need to separate them.

If they are 1 component and they can be hosted together, then I believe you can use something like Express.js for your API which can query the database and respond to HTTP requests from the website.

This is a common approach.

Upvotes: 3

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