APIs

Overview

Developer Portal offers you an exclusive platform to safely expose your APIs to your target developers and partners.

Developer Portal also allows developers to self-register, learn about these APIs, and use the APIs in their applications.

To prepare to manage the APIs that you plan to make available in Developer Portal, consider the following questions:

• How many Developer Portal instances you might need?

• Which organizations might use Developer Portal?

• Which users in the organization might use Developer Portal to consume the published APIs?

• Which taxonomies and categories are required to organize the APIs?

For each Developer Portal instance, there is a Developer Portal object registered with the API Provider. A Developer Portal is associated with an organization. Multiple Developer Portal instances can share the same organization.

An API can be published to multiple Developer Portal instances. Developer Portal is capable of managing APIs published from API Gateway or any other provider application.

When an API is unpublished (removed) from Developer Portal, its metadata is deleted from Developer Portal, and the API is no longer available for access.

In addition to APIs published from a provider, you can also create APIs in Developer Portal by providing a corresponding specification. The APIs created in Developer Portal need not be associated with any providers.

You can download the published APIs from Developer Portal to have a copy of the API specification.

How do I create an API?

You can create an API using a file, URL, or by providing the source content.

Developer Portal supports the publishing of OData APIs from provider applications such as API Gateway. However, you cannot create OData APIs in Developer Portal by providing a specification.

This use case starts when you want to create an API and ends when you have successfully created an API.

Before you begin:

Ensure that you have the file, URL, or the required content for creating the API.

In this example, you create an API Petstore using the https://petstore.swagger.io/v2/swagger.json URL. The API is assigned to the provider, Provider1 and the community, Mobile_app_developer.

To create an API

1. Click the menu options icon from the title bar and click Manage APIs.

2. Click Create API.

3. Provide Petstore in the Name field.

4. Select Swagger from the Type list.

5. Select Provider1 in the Provider field.

6. Select Mobile_app_developer from the Community field.

7. Select URL from the Import with section and provide https://petstore.swagger.io/v2/swagger.json in the field.

   

8. Click Create.

   The API is created. You can view the API from the API gallery page and the Manage APIs page.

Alternative flow

1. In Step 4, select any of the following API types from the Type list:

   • Open API. To create a REST API using an Open API specification.

   • RAML. To create a REST API using a RAML specification.

   • WSDL. To create a SOAP API using a WSDL specification.

2. In Step 7, provide the following inputs to create an API from the Import with section:

   • File. To create API from a file. Click Browse and select the required file.

   • Content. To create API from the given content. Provide the required parser content using which the API has to be created. Ensure that the content does not have references to external files.

How do I edit the basic attributes of an API?

Basic attributes of APIs include the API name, description, type, providers and communities associated with an API, and the API source.

This use case starts when you want to edit the basic attributes of an API and ends when you save your changes.

In this example, consider renaming the Pet_v1 API as Petstore_v1.

To edit the basic details of an API

1. Click the menu options icon from the title bar and click Manage APIs.

   The list of APIs appears.

2. Click the edit icon next to the Pet_v1 API.

   

3. Click Save.

   Your changes are saved. The API is removed from the public community. So, only the users who are a part of the Mobile_app_developer community can view or try the API.

How do I edit the advanced attributes of an API?

Advanced attributes of APIs include the API logo or icon, supporting documents, categories, and summary and description of the API resources.

Developer Portal supports providing of Markdown text and text in the supported languages for the following API attributes:

• API summary and description

• API categories such as tags, business terms, API grouping, and maturity status

• API documents

• Resource summary and description

• Method summary and description

Note: For security reasons, it is recommended that you add authentic and valid Markdown content.

Sample Markdown text:

This use case starts when you want to edit the advanced attributes of an API and ends when you saved your changes.

In this example, consider adding API tags under API categories of the API, Petstore.

To edit the advanced details of an API

1. Click the menu options icon from the title bar and click Manage APIs.

   The list of APIs appears.

2. Click the enrich icon next to the API that you want to edit.

3. Select API categories from the left pane and provide the new tag, Swagger and press Enter.

   

4. Click Save.

   The tag is added to the API. Users can filter APIs based on tags in the API gallery page.

Alternative flow

• You can provide or modify the following details of the API:

  • API info

  • API summary and description

  • Resource summary and description

  • Method summary and description

• Sample Markdown text:

In this example, information is given under two different levels of headings.



Then, the output looks like this.



For information on Markdown text, see https://www.markdownguide.org/extended-syntax/.

How do I create a new version of an API?

When you create a new version of an API, the API gallery page displays the latest version of the API. You can view all versions of the from the Manage APIs page. The API details page has a drop-down list that displays all API versions.

You can create new versions of an API for the use of a different set of consumers or with different security policies. New data can also be updated to the existing meta-data when you create new versions of your APIs.

The new API has the same metadata but with an updated version. The version can either be a number or a string.

Different versions of an API can be added to different communities and can be associated with different packages.

This use case starts when you want to create a new version of an existing API and ends when you created a new version of an API.

In this example, consider creating a new version of the API, Petstore 2.0 and map the newer version to the Public community.

To create a new version of an API

1. Click from the title bar and click Manage APIs.

   The list of APIs appear.

2. Click the version icon next to the API, Petstore.

3. Provide 2.0 in the Version field.

4. Select Swagger from the Type list.

5. Select Provider1 in the Provider field.

6. Select Public from the Community field.

7. Select URL from the Import with section and provide https://petstore.swagger.io/v2/swagger.json in the field.

   

8. Click Save.

   A new version of the API, Petstore is created.

   

   Note: When you version an API, you can create versions from the newer version of the API and not from the older version.

   In the example, note that the older API does not have the version icon appearing next to it.

Alternative flow

1. You can update the API by uploading a new file or by providing a new URL or pasting new content.

2. You can also map the API to another provider.

Next steps

• All consumers can view the newer verison of the API as it is a part of the public community.