Effective API management offers numerous benefits for organizations. Firstly, it enhances user experience by providing clear and consistent APIs, simplifying interactions for developers and end-users alike. Secondly, it ensures security and access control through features like authentication and authorization, safeguarding sensitive data from unauthorized access. Additionally, API management platforms facilitate scalability, allowing APIs to handle increasing user traffic without sacrificing performance. Moreover, they provide analytics and monitoring capabilities, enabling businesses to gain insights into user behaviour, optimize performance, and enhance the overall user experience. Furthermore, API management fosters integration and interoperability by facilitating the seamless connection of diverse systems and applications, accelerating development and promoting innovation. Now, with the APIIDA API Control Plane, all these benefits are made possible, offering organizations a comprehensive solution for managing their APIs effectively and efficiently.

Federated API Management offers additional benefits such as centralized governance across multiple API gateways, simplified API discovery and consumption for developers, enhanced security and compliance through centralized policies and access controls, and improved scalability and resilience through distributed API management infrastructure.

As next, the documentation will proceed to explain how to implement these advantages effectively. If you want to learn more about the basic concepts, you can do so in the following chapter: APIs, API Products, Versions and Plans

All your APIs

The APIs menu item on the left takes you to the overview of all APIs. In the top right-hand corner, you can create new APIs, discover existing ones or validate all specification documents using the three-dot menu.

Specification File Validation

You can also select APIs within the table and validate their specification documents or delete the entire API.

In the “Name” column, you will not only see the display name, but also the image and the API tags created. You can filter APIs by clicking on one of these tags above the table under Filter by Tag. This filter option is identical to the one in the Developer Portal.

In “Deployed On” you can see in which environment the API is currently deployed and with which version. Under “Status”, you can see whether the API is currently active. An API that is not active cannot be subscribed to and is not visible in the Developer Portal.

Create a new API from Specification File

Follow these instructions to create a new API by uploading an Open Proxy Specification file.
See OpenProxy Specification for details about the Open Proxy Specification format.

• Navigate to “APIs“ in the menu on the left side.

• Select “Create New API“ from the menu in the top right corner.

• A dialogue will open, that will guide you through the API creation process. Make sure to select “Create new API from specification files”. Use the Left “Choose“ button to select your Open Proxy Specification file. Optionally, you may also select an API Specification file (e.g. Open API) for documentation. If you omit the API Specification file here, you can always upload it later, after API creation has been completed.

• Click the “Next” button to proceed. The Open Proxy Specification is now analysed by API Control Plane and you will see the result of this analysis.

• If any errors have been found, you will have to correct your Open Proxy Specification file. You can then click “Back“ and select the corrected file. Note: a common mistake is to upload the API Specification file instead of the Open Proxy Specification file. Please make sure you have selected the correct file.

• If no errors have been found, click “Next” to proceed. If any warnings have been found, you should have a look at them, but you can still proceed to the next step.

• Enter the details for the new API. The fields have been pre-populated with the values from you Open Proxy Specification file. You may choose to change some of these values here, e.g. provide a more detailed description or use a different display name. Keep in mind, though, that when you deploy your API into a gateway, the values from your Open Proxy Specification file will be used. See APIs for more info about API details.

• The next step will inform you about the successful creation of the API. You can now choose to immediately deploy the API into one or more environments, by clicking “Next” or you can click “Skip” to finish the API Creation process at this point.

• Select one or more environments to which you want to deploy the new API. Note that only environments that support Open Proxy Specification Deployment will be listed here (See Environment Capabilities)

• In the final step, you will see which environments you have selected and you can choose which API version to deploy into these environments. Since you just created a new API with a single version, you only have one option here. Click “Deploy and Finish“ to start deploying the API and finish the API creation process.

Create API from Git repository

In the following article you will learn how to create an API by specifying a git repository with the necessary files in it.