What is BFF?

You need to think of the user-facing application as being two components — a client-side application living outside your perimeter and a server-side component (BFF) inside your perimeter. BFF is a variant of the API Gateway pattern, but it also provides an additional layer between microservices and each client type separately. Instead of a single point of entry, it introduces multiple gateways. Because of that, you can have a tailored API that targets the needs of each client (mobile, web, desktop, voice assistant, etc.), and remove a lot of the bloat caused by keeping it all in one place. The below image describes how it works.

Why BFF?

1. Decoupling of Backend and Frontend for sure gives us faster time to market as frontend teams can have dedicated backend teams serving their unique needs. The release of new features of one frontend does not affect the other.

2. We can much easier maintain and modify API and even provide API versioning dedicated for specific frontend, which is a big plus from a mobile app perspective as many users do not update the app immediately.

3. Simplify the system from Frontend and Backend perspectives as we don’t need any compromise.

4. The BFF can benefit from hiding unnecessary or sensitive data before transferring it to the frontend application interface, so keys and tokens for 3rd party services can be stored and used from BFF.

5. Allows to send formatted data to frontend and because of that can minimalize logic on it.

6. Additionally, give us possibilities for performance improvements and good optimization for mobile.

Conclusion

Backend For Frontend is a design pattern created with the developer and, more importantly, the user and their experience in mind. It is the answer to the ever-growing adoption of applications to meet, interact, and serve customers, ensuring consistency while still meeting their diverse and evolving needs.

Later on I will be covering how this can help in creating a server driver user interface in android.