Monoliths and Microservices

Module 7

Backend for Frontend

One backend per client experience, owned by the team that builds that experience: what it solves that a shared API cannot, how it differs from a gateway, and the duplication it costs.

31 min2 lessons
Start module

What you will be able to do

  • Explain the pressure a shared general-purpose API comes under from several clients.
  • Distinguish a backend for frontend from an API gateway and from a service.
  • Decide who owns a BFF and why that ownership is the point.
  • Recognise when BFF duplication has become a problem and what to do about it.
  • Choose between a BFF, a shared API and a query-language approach on evidence.

  1. 01Why a Shared API Fails Several Clients

    A single general-purpose API serving a web app, a mobile app and a partner integration ends up serving none of them well. A BFF is a per-experience answer.

  2. 02Duplication, Ownership, and the Alternatives

    BFFs trade duplication for autonomy. The trade is good under specific conditions and poor outside them — and there are two serious alternatives worth evaluating first.

Backend for Frontend

6 questions · pass at 75%