Azure API Management enables businesses to securely, reliably, and at scale publish APIs hosted on Azure, on-premises, and in other clouds. Use API Management to increase API usage among internal teams, partners, and developers while taking advantage of the admin portal’s business and log analytics. This service aids in the provisioning of user roles, the creation of consumption plans and quotas, the application of policies for altering payloads, throttling, analytics, monitoring, and alerts—everything your organization requires for end-to-end API management.
About
Customers may publish, secure, transform, maintain, and monitor APIs with Azure API Management, which is a completely managed service. With a few clicks in the Azure portal, you can create an API façade that acts as a “front door” through which external and internal applications can access data or business logic implemented by your custom-built backend services, whether they’re hosted on Azure, for example on App Service or Azure Kubernetes Service, or on-premises.
API Management is in charge of request authentication and authorization, rate restriction and quota enforcement, request and response transformation, logging and tracing, and API version management, among other things.
Azure API Management Components
It is divided into three parts: Azure Portal, Developer Portal, and API Gateway.
Azure Portal
We are already familiar with the Azure portal. Throughout this course, we’ve used it to construct a variety of Azure resources, such as virtual machines, app service instances, and SQL databases. We also utilize it to set up and do various API management tasks. We can, for example, use the Azure portal to
- Create an API schema or import one.
- Set up policies on the APIs, such as quotas and transformations.
- Analytics can provide you with valuable information.
- Organize your users
Developer Portal
The Developer site, as the name suggests, is for developers who wish to use your APIs in the apps they’re creating. They can use it if they want to.
- To obtain API keys, create an account and subscribe.
- Examine the API documentation.
- They can look at their own usage statistics.
API Gateway
The Azure gateway is something we’re already familiar with. We’ve used it to create a range of Azure resources, including virtual machines, app service instances, and SQL databases, throughout this course. We also use it to set up and administer numerous APIs. For example, we can use the Azure portal to
- Create or import an API schema.
- APIs can be combine to create products.
- Establish API policies, such as quotas and transformations.
- Analytics may give you a lot of useful information.
- Sort out your users.
Outline of what APIM provides
- API documentation: This is a tool that generates automatic API documentation ideas, allowing developers to integrate their solutions much more quickly. You may quickly expose the API structure by leveraging modern frameworks and standards, such as OpenAPI. Additionally, this tool allows you to execute multiple versions of your API at the same time, allowing for testing, trailing, and backward compatibility.
- Rate-limiting access: Controlling access to accessible data is critical, especially if a huge volume of data is being sent to the API. Rate limiting is a technique for ensuring that each client receives the best possible response time. It can be done for the entire API or for select customers.
- Health monitoring: Since APIs are accessed by remote clients, it can be difficult to spot any possible concerns, such as if your backend is offline or responding slowly. APIM, on the other hand, can keep track of both faults and other types of responses and present you with logs.
- A broad variety of formats: APIM supports typical online formats such as XML, CSV, and, of course, JSON, which is widely used in web technologies for information transmission. It can also be use to manage conversion between formats.
- Data manipulation: Allows you to implement data transformations between your front-end and back-end, wherever the policies are need, such as converting XML to JSON, restricting call rate (to limit the number of incoming calls from a developer), removing unwanted headers, and more.
- Improvement of performance: APIM allows you to save responses to typical queries in a cache. When you don’t need to connect to your backend for static data, performance improves.
- Cost management: APIM features five pricing tiers, ranging from the Developer tier, which has a set price, to the newly announced Consumption tier, which is a serverless pay-as-you-go alternative.
APIs and operations
An API Management service instance is built on the foundation of APIs. Each API is a set of operations that developers can use. Each API has a reference to the back-end service that implements the API, and its operations correspond to the back-end service’s operations. API Management operations have extensive configuration options, including URL mapping, query and path parameters, request and response content, and operation response caching. At the API or individual operation level, rate limits, quotas, and IP restriction policies can all be implemented.
Products
APIs are announce to developers through products. API Management products have one or more APIs, each with its own title, description, and terms of use. There are two types of products: open and protected. Protected items require a subscription before they can be utilise, whereas open products do not require one. It is possible to publish a product after it is ready for use by developers. Developers can read it once it is publish. At the product level, subscription approval can be customise to require administrator permission or be auto-approve.
Groups
Groups are used to control which products are visible to developers. The following system groups are immutable in API Management:
- Administrators: This category includes Azure subscription administrators. API Management service instances are managed by administrators, who create the APIs, processes, and products that developers utilise.
- Developers: Users who have logged in to the developer portal come into this category. Customers who use your APIs to create applications are known as developers. Developers are given access to the developer portal and are able to create applications that invoke API operations.
- Guests: Unauthenticated developer portal visitors, such as prospective customers browsing an API Management instance’s developer portal, fall into this category. They can be given read-only access to some APIs, such as the ability to observe but not call them.
Azure Active Directory
Administrators can also establish custom groups or use external groups in connected Azure Active Directory tenants in addition to these system groups. Custom and external groups, in addition to system groups, can be use to provide developers with visibility and access to API products. For example, you could create a special group for developers linked with a specific partner organisation. Also, grant them access to only relevant APIs from a product. A user can be a part of multiple groups.
Administrators can also establish custom groups or use external groups in connected Azure Active Directory tenants in addition to these system groups. Custom and external groups, in addition to system groups, can be use to provide developers with visibility and access to API products. For example, you could create a special group for developers linked with a specific partner organisation and grant them access to only relevant APIs from a product. A user can be a part of multiple groups.
Developers
In an API Management service instance, developers represent the user accounts. Administrators can create or invite developers to join, or they can sign up using the Developer portal. Each developer belongs to one or more groups and can subscribe to goods that provide those groups prominence.
Developers are given the primary and secondary keys to a product when they subscribe to it. This key is need for using the product’s APIs.
Policies
Policies are a significant feature of API Management that allows you to configure the API’s behaviour using the Azure portal. They are a set of statements that are sequentially in response to an API request or response. Many other policies are available. Also, including format conversion from XML to JSON and call rate restriction to limit the number of incoming calls from a developer.
Unless the policy says, policy expressions can be use as attribute values in any of the API Management policies. Control flow and Set variable policies, for example, are based on policy expressions.
Developer Portal
Developers may learn about your APIs, inspect and call activities, and subscribe to products using the developer site. Customers that are interested can go to the developer portal to learn more about the APIs and operations.
You may personalise the look and feel of your developer portal by adding new content, changing the styles, and branding it.
To Conclude!
APIM is a spectacular tool that can provide the framework to set up APIs for the services you want in both an easy and intuitive manner. Here are some of the best and most important features:
- You only pay for what you use with the consumption pricing tier layer.
- You don’t have to worry about scaling concerns because it adapts to your system’s needs automatically.
- The developer site for automated documentatio.
- However, is not available because the tier has limited functionality. If you currently have your own API and wish to add a security and governance layer.
- For instance such as quota rates or items offered via the API, the consumption tier can be a good fit.
- The ability to run many versions and revisions at once, allowing you to test new features without affecting the current version.
- In addition, there is flexibility and backward compatibility.
