When you have a selected a Plan and you begin coding your application, you must retrieve
the operation URL to call the API.
About this task
Be aware of the following points when you call APIs in IBM®
API Connect:
- In the HTTP response message for status code 200 the reason phrase is replaced with
OK.
- API error messages are displayed in English only.
Procedure
To retrieve the operation URL, complete the following
steps:
-
Click API Products, then click API under the name
of the Product that contains the API you want to work with.
-
Click the API that you want to work with.
The API overview page opens.
-
Under the API Operations heading, copy the URL.
This is the URL that the application calls, and its structure is defined:
Type of API |
URL |
REST APIs |
https://host/org/catalog/api/operation |
SOAP APIs |
https://host/org/catalog/api
for all operations in the WSDL. |
where:
- host is the fully qualified host name of your gateway cluster.
- org is the URL path of your organization.
- catalog is the name of your Catalog.
- api is the name of your API.
- operation is the URL path of your operation.
- Take note of any parameters, the request body, and the
response body. Code your application to create the expected requests
and handle the expected responses.
Depending on the Identify your application using setting for the
API, you might have to provide a client ID, or client ID and client secret. To do this, complete the
following steps:
-
To find the client ID, complete the following steps:
-
Click Apps, then click the application name that you want to work
with.
-
Select the Show check box for Client ID.
The client ID is displayed.
-
Provide the client ID with the query parameter &client_id=
For example, the URL used in the API might be:
https://host/org/catalog/api/quote?loanAmount=20000
but when you call it with a client ID of
1234, change the URL to:
https://host/org/catalog/api/quote?loanAmount=20000&client_id=1234
-
The client secret is produced when you register an application. Provide the client secret with
the query parameter &client_secret=. If you did not note the client secret
when you registered the application, you must reset it; for information, see Managing applications.
The client ID, or client ID and secret can be logged
along with the URL. Web servers usually log the URL in their access
logs, which would give away the client secret. If you do not want
to expose your client ID or secret in the URL, complete the following
steps.
- For the client ID, set the header,
X-IBM-Client-Id
,
as part of the HTTP message that the application sends when it calls
the API. An example URL statement might be:
curl --header "X-IBM-Client-Id: 1234" https://host/org/catalog/api/quote?loanAmount=20000
- For the client secret, set the header,
X-IBM-Client-Secret
,
as part of the HTTP message that the application sends when it calls
the API. For example, the URL would be:
https://host/org/catalog/api/quote?loanAmount=20000
and set the following HTTP headers:
X-IBM-Client-Id=1234
X-IBM-Client-Secret=ABCD
What to do next
Monitor the API and application usage. For more information, see Managing applications.