Preface
We, as authors, all agree that the reason for this book is to share our API Connect experience, as consultants with multiple clients, to guide new clients with the benefits of our knowledge. All of us agree that when confronted with new digital transformation challenges, we all try our best to transfer knowledge to those who have not had the experience we have had.
We embarked on this journey with mutual friendship and comradery in helping our users and customers, making our best effort to ensure they are successful. Your success is our success. Obviously, today's rapid expansion in delivering new features and functions instills a tremendous demand for rapid performance. It is our hope that this book provides the energy to deliver digital transformation in your organization.
Who this book is for
This book is for the architect or developer who has embarked on a digital transformation journey. Your background in web services and API development reinforces the need for API management. You know that building APIs quickly and making them discoverable is critical to achieving your corporate initiatives. This book will allow you to understand how IBM API Connect will enable your API management vision.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Digital Transformation and Modernization with API Connect, looks at digital transformation and modernization – two adaptations that organizations are moving towards to help them be more effective. API integration plays an important role in the success of these initiatives.
Chapter 2, Introducing API Connect, introduces API Connect and its associated components. You'll learn about the various deployment models and take a deeper dive into the associated components, such as the Developer Portal, the Gateway Service, and Analytics. You will also learn about the management capabilities provided by the CLI commands.
Chapter 3, Setting Up and Getting Organized, looks at how, before starting to build APIs there is some housekeeping work that should be accomplished to ensure your digital transformation follows a framework for success. This means you address various factors, such as who is providing the APIs, how you will address consumer expectations, and setting up for operational efficiency. This chapter will help you get started on the correct footing.
Chapter 4, API Creation, helps you learn how to use API Connect to develop APIs. You will discover how easy it is to navigate through and immediately publish new APIs.
Chapter 5, Modernizing SOAP Services, addresses the fact that many organizations still support many SOAP web services. These valuable assets still perform necessary business functions and there are often external consumers who need access to them. API Connect has the ability to incorporate these services so they can be managed. In this chapter, you will learn how to add SOAP services as APIs.
Chapter 6, Supporting FHIR REST Services, looks at FHIR (short for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), an HL7 standard that supports providing resources using REST APIs and JSON. This chapter introduces how to develop REST APIs that support the FHIR specification.
Chapter 7, Securing APIs, addresses the fact that APIs need to be secured. In this chapter, you will learn how to secure your APIs with basic authentication, OAuth2/OpenID, and JWT. You also will learn how to configure LDAP and authentication URLs as user registries.
Chapter 8, Message Transformations, introduces methods of transforming payloads, headers, and variables of APIs. We will discuss XSLT and GatewayScript transformations as well as JSON to XML, XML to JSON, Redaction, Parse, and Map policies.
Chapter 9, Building a GraphQL API, looks at how managing multiple versions of APIs can complicate your API strategy. GraphQL is one option to address the concern. In this chapter, we introduce GraphQL and how API Connect provides safeguards to GraphQL APIs.
Chapter 10, Publishing Options, explores how to customize your deployment to an environment where users can access your APIs. Since it's all about the consumer experience, this chapter will show you how to publish APIs that are easy to discover, well documented, and mindful of overages.
Chapter 11, API Management and Governance, delves into how you go about managing your APIs. You will learn about how consumers access your APIs and how versioning has an impact on prior releases. You will also learn how other roles can be used to limit what organizations can perform.
Chapter 12, User-Defined Policies, covers how API Connect provides the ability to create your own custom policies. These become reusable components that you can drag onto the Gateway Policy editor. Often, this is created to enforce a security requirement but it can be used to create additional helper functionality that doesn't exist out of the box.
Chapter 13, Using Test and Monitor for Unit Tests, API Connect Test and Monitor is an add-on feature of API Connect. You can use this facility to generate on-the-fly unit tests for your API deployments that can be rerun anytime.
Chapter 14, Building Pipelines for API Connect, customizes the API Connect Developer Portal with new themes as well as applying additional functionality provided by the Drupal content manager. As you know, digital transformation puts an emphasis on user experience and social interaction. Learning how to customize the Developer Portal is one of the keys to success. Also, in this chapter, you will learn how to customize the analytics of your APIs. You can create new dashboards and visualizations and even provide analytics to your consumers' applications.
Chapter 15, API Analytics and the Developer Portal, looks at how managing multiple versions of APIs can complicate your API strategy. GraphQL is one option to address this concern. In this chapter, we introduce GraphQL and how API Connect provides safeguards to GraphQL APIs.
Chapter 16, What's Next in Digital Transformation Post-COVID?, informs you of any new changes coming to API Connect or any late-breaking news on additional fix packs and/or updates. As you know, digital transformation doesn't stop with APIs. As new capabilities become available, some of these capabilities may fit well within your organization.
To get the most out of this book
You must understand that API Connect is not open source. You will need to have API Connect available to you. You can procure it in IBM Cloud or perhaps your employer has purchased a license of API Connect Enterprise. Regardless, you will need to access API Connect on the cloud or within your organization. While the book will guide you without a licensed API Connect implementation system, not having one will hamper your experience. The book is based on v10.0.1.5.
If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book's GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.
Download the example code files
You can download the example code files for this book from GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Digital-Transformation-and-Modernization-with-IBM-API-Connect. If there's an update to the code, it will be updated in the GitHub repository.
Download the color images
We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots and diagrams used in this book. You can download it here:
https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781801070799_ColorImages.pdf
Conventions used
There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.
Code in text: Indicates code words in text, host names, userids, catalogs, and organizations. Here is an example: "To run the actual tests, you will use the same URL, Key, and Secret and just change the path from /test to /test/run."
A parameter block is set as follows:
<api manager host> = api-manager-ui.apicisoa.com
<userid> = isoadeveloper
<catalog> = sandbox
<organization> = middleware
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
curl -v -k -X POST
-F "product=@/home/[user]/jenkins/workspace/basic-product_1.0.0.yaml;type=application/yaml"
-F "openapi=@/home/[user]/jenkins/workspace/basic-test_1.0.0.yaml;type=application/yaml"
-H "Authorization: Bearer [GENERATED TOKEN]"
-H 'Accept: application/json'
https://[apimserver]/api/catalogs/[organization name]/[catalog]/publish
Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: "Select System info from the Administration panel."
Tips or important notes
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Get in touch
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