Request Lifecycle

Want the one-page mental model first? Start with Request Flow & Data Lifecycle.

• You get consistent behavior across endpoints.

• Retries are safer when errors are structured.

• Tracing is possible with the request identifier.

Why this matters for clients

1

1) Enter the gateway

• TLS termination and basic request sanity checks.

• A request identifier is created and propagated downstream.

• No protocol-specific logic happens here.

Read: API Gateway Entry

2

2) Authenticate and enforce quotas

• API key validation.

• Rate limits and abuse protection.

• Early rejection for invalid or over-limit traffic.

Read: Authentication & Rate Limits

3

3) Route to a domain service

• Route selection is endpoint + version aware.

• Parameters are sanitized before forwarding.

• The gateway remains thin and deterministic.

Read: Internal Routing

4

4) Fetch, derive, normalize

• Domain service talks to upstreams and caches.

• Raw data is parsed and enriched.

• Output is normalized to stable schemas.

Read: Data Processing & Normalization

5

5) Respond and emit telemetry

• Service returns a structured payload.

• Gateway wraps responses and standardizes errors.

• Logs and metrics are emitted with the request identifier.

Read: Response & Telemetry

High-frequency workloads should prefer streams or webhooks. Polling turns rate limits into a performance bottleneck.