Concepts

The Gloo Portal provides two parallel sets of features which can be used independently, but function best when they are combined.

The first is Routing: by leveraging the underlying Gateway functionality, Gloo Portal can automatically expose service APIs on behalf of users without the need to directly interact with the underlying infrastructure (Istio / Gloo Edge/ Kubernetes). By enabling Routing through Gloo Portal, users can apply authorization and rate limiting policies to individual APIs without having to reason through complex and gateway configurations.

The second is the Portal Web UI. The Portal Web UI provides a customizable web application which enables developer onboarding for APIs:

• Browse a catalog of published APIs including static and generated documentation.
• Request API Keys for accessing protected APIs.
• Visualize and interact with published API resources.

Refer to the following sections to learn more about the Routing and Portal features provided by Gloo Portal.

• Architecture: What are the components of Gloo Portal

• API Management: How do I manage my APIs with Gloo Portal?

• Portal UI: How does Gloo Portal make it easy to consume APIs?

• Routing: How does routing work in Gloo Portal?