API development checklist

A summary, with links, of the key tasks for developing APIs in IBM® API Connect.

Task Description
Set up the toolkit The developer toolkit provides a command-line environment so that you can develop and work with your APIs on your local device; you can publish your APIs to the Management server when ready.
Create your API definitions You can create API definitions in the following ways:
  • Create a REST API definition either by composing the API definition, and its operations, from scratch, creating a proxy API that calls an existing endpoint, or importing an OpenAPI definition.
  • Expose an existing SOAP service as an API.
  • Create a GraphQL API proxy definition that proxies a backend GraphQL server.
You configure security for an API by creating one or more security definitions that you then apply to your API, and to the operations in your API. Security mechanisms include basic authentication through a user registry, and token based authentication with OAuth.
Test your APIs The user interfaces provide a test tool with which you can test your APIs through the gateway.
Productize and publish your APIs To make your APIs available to application developers, you include them in a Product that you then publish to the gateway.
Apply visibility controls and rate limiting to your APIs Visibility settings control which APIs the application developers can subscribe to. Rate limiting controls the usage of your APIs; for example, you can apply a rate limit of 100 calls per minute.
Develop your APIs by using the developer toolkit CLI You can use the developer toolkit CLI to develop APIs based on OpenAPI definition files in YAML or JSON format.