A robust API management strategy is vital for modern businesses. Understanding the API management lifecycle offers valuable insights for designing, deploying, and managing secure APIs that meet both business objectives and user requirements.

For example, an ecommerce company, ACME Chocolatiers, could use Celigo to expose APIs for inventory management, order processing, packaging, and shipping. This would enable seamless interaction between their internal systems and external partners or customers.

The lifecycle consists of four key stages:

• Design
• Secure
• Socialize
• Monitor

Once APIs are designed and secured, the next step is to ensure that these APIs are easily accessible, well-documented, and consumable by developers, partners, and customers in order to seamlessly integrate them into their own applications.

In this article, we will explore how businesses can leverage Celigo API Management to document and publish their APIs through a Developer Portal, enabling partners and customers to efficiently discover, subscribe to, and utilize their APIs.

Publishing to developer portal

A developer portal is a crucial tool in API management that serves as the face of your API to the outside world. It provides a centralized catalog where application developers for partners and customers can discover, explore, and test your APIs. In essence, the developer portal acts as a self-service hub for API consumers to understand and interact with your APIs without direct intervention from the API providers.

Before API consumers can interact with your APIs, they must be published to the portal, which can be done from the API management console. Once published, APIs are listed in the portal, where consumers can browse the available APIs grouped by category and select the ones relevant to their needs. API consumers first register with the portal using their business or personal email IDs. Once registered, they gain access to all the capabilities provided by the developer portal.

Enabling API discovery

After logging into the developer portal, API consumers can explore the published APIs. The portal organizes APIs into categories, helping consumers quickly find the relevant APIs based on their specific needs. For instance, ACME Chocolatiers could categorize their APIs into “Inventory APIs” for internal use and “Order Management APIs” for partners. By selecting an API from the catalog, consumers can view detailed documentation in Swagger format.

Documenting an API for enhanced usability

Clear and concise documentation is critical for driving API adoption. When APIs are well-documented, developers can easily comprehend the functionality and how to integrate the API with their systems. The developer portal uses OpenAPI specifications to display documentation in a standardized format.

In the case of simple APIs like exports or imports, the OpenAPI spec gets automatically generated by the Celigo platform. However, for custom composite APIs, you will need to manually update the documentation based on the request and response schema of the endpoints.

By keeping the documentation up-to-date, you ensure that API consumers have all the necessary information to interact with the API effectively. Security schemes, such as API keys, JWT, or OAuth2, are also documented, allowing developers to understand the authentication methods required to access the APIs.

Enabling API testing with “Try It” mode

One of the developer portal’s most valuable features is the ability for consumers to test APIs before integrating them. This “Try It” mode allows users to execute real-time requests directly from the portal and see the responses immediately. For example, if a developer working with ACME’s inventory API wants to test an endpoint, they can do so without writing any code.

To ensure smooth API testing, the portal must be properly configured with Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS), which allows client applications hosted on different domains to interact with the API.

Subscribing to an API

For API consumers to begin using an API in their applications, they need to subscribe to it. Subscribing involves creating an application within the portal, selecting an API plan, and receiving an API key or token.

Once the API publisher accepts the subscription request, the API consumer can access the API key or token within the portal and use it to make authorized requests to the API. Managing subscriptions in this way ensures that only authorized users have access to the APIs, maintaining security while allowing seamless access for legitimate users.

Customizing the Developer Portal

Providing a customized, branded experience is essential for making your developer portal stand out. The APIM console offers portal customization options that allow you to add a logo, change the color scheme, and update the homepage to reflect your company’s branding. This ensures that your developer portal not only functions well but also aligns with your brand’s identity.

Deprecating API plans

As APIs evolve, older versions may be deprecated. When an API plan is deprecated, existing users are allowed to migrate to a newer plan or version without interrupting their applications. This ensures that while new users cannot subscribe to deprecated plans, existing subscribers can continue using the API until they transition to a new version. This way, API deprecation is handled consumer-friendly, ensuring that migrations are smooth and do not cause service disruptions.

Socializing APIs

The socialize phase of API management is a critical step in maximizing the value of your APIs. Businesses can use Celigo API Management to document and publish their APIs through a developer portal, enabling their partners and customers to efficiently discover, subscribe to, and consume their APIs. The ability to customize the portal ensures that the user experience is functional but also branded and intuitive.