Publishing a LoopBack application through the API Designer

Publish a LoopBack® application to an API Connect collective to make the application available for use by your API definitions. You can also publish a Product to a Catalog at the same time. [V5.0.5 or later]The syndication feature in IBM® API Connect means that you can also publish a Product to a Space in a Catalog.

Before you begin

To complete this task, you must have:
  • Created a LoopBack application.
  • Set up an API Connect collective and added it in the Cloud Manager. For more information, see Installing API Connect Collective.
  • Created an App in API Manager. For more information, see Creating an App.
  • Permission to publish applications to your API Connect collective.
Important:
  • IBM API Connect collectives are deprecated in IBM API Connect Version 5.0.7 in favor of container runtimes. For more information and background, see Open, scalable, flexible runtime management of APIs through API Connect enabled containers. For information on setting up and migrating to containers, see Installing a containerized runtime environment.
  • Existing customers can continue to use their collectives with IBM API Connect Version 5.0.7, and if wanted can expand their collective deployments to new servers. API Connect collectives are supported for existing customers until the end of support of IBM API Connect Version 5.0 (see Software lifecycle page for IBM API Connect Version 5.0). Until then, users of API Connect collectives are encouraged to migrate to container runtimes to take advantage of their agility and scalability.
  • New customers should not install API Connect collectives because this feature is no longer supported for new users.
Note:
  • LoopBack projects contain both APIs and applications. To enable LoopBack projects to run, you must publish both the APIs (by publishing the Products that contain the APIs) and the associated applications.
  • [V5.0.5 or later]All references in this topic to a Catalog can also be applied to a Space in a Catalog, unless specified otherwise. For more information about Spaces, see Using syndication in IBM API Connect®.

Procedure

  1. If you want to add or edit a target, complete the following steps:
    1. In the API Designer, click Publish.
    2. Click Add and Manage Targets.
    3. Click Add a different target.
    4. In the API Connect host address field, enter the host address of your API Manager instance. For example, use hostname.com when you would use https://hostname.com/apim to access API Manager. Do not use an IP address.
    5. In the Username and Password fields, enter your API Manager user name and password.
    6. Click Sign in.
    7. Click Next.
    8. In the Organization field, select the provider organization to which you want to stage or publish any Products and then click the Catalog to which you want to stage or publish any Products. If you do not want to stage or publish any Products to this target, click None.
      If you have many Catalogs to choose from, you can filter them by using the Search field.
    9. Click Next.
    10. Click the App to which you want to publish your application.
    11. Click Save to add the publishing target.
  2. In the API Designer, click Publish.
  3. Click the target to which you want to publish your application.
  4. Select Publish application, and if you want to stage or publish a Product at the same time, select Stage or Publish products.
  5. Optional: If you are staging a Product, select Stage only.
  6. Optional: If you do not want to stage or publish all Products in your current project, select Select specific products and then select the Products that you do want to stage or publish.
  7. Click Publish.

Results

Your application is published to your API Connect collective. If you staged or published a Product, it is also staged or published.