Pushing REST APIs to IBM API Connect

Create or update a definition for your deployed REST APIs on IBM® API Connect.

Before you begin

You must complete the following tasks:
  • Register or update credentials for the API owner with IBM API Connect:
  • If you intend to stage the REST API to a catalog, ensure that the IBM API Connect server has a catalog to which you can stage a product that includes the REST API.
  • Ensure that any firewalls allow the following connections:
    • IBM App Connect Enterprise can connect to the IBM API Connect server by using HTTPS.
    • The IBM API Connect server can connect to the integration server by using HTTP or HTTPS.
  • Create a REST API in the IBM App Connect Enterprise Toolkit; see Creating a REST API.
  • Deploy the REST API to the integration server; see Packaging and deploying a REST API.

About this task

You can push the definition of deployed REST APIs into IBM API Connect, which you can then use to manage and publish your APIs. Use IBM API Connect to promote and monitor the usage of the REST APIs, and to secure and authenticate access requests from users and applications to your IBM App Connect Enterprise application. It also provides monitoring and fine-grained control over access and workload management, such as the ability to control the number of requests per second for a client application. For information about supported versions of IBM API Connect, see the IBM App Connect Enterprise system requirements web page.

IBM API Connect works with an IBM DataPower® Gateway appliance. IBM API Connect pushes configuration to the IBM DataPower Gateway, which in turn proxies the requests back to the IBM App Connect Enterprise integration server that hosts the deployed REST API, as shown in the following diagram.

Figure 1. The interaction between IBM App Connect Enterprise, IBM API Connect, IBM DataPower Gateway, and HTTP client applications.
This diagram shows the interaction between IBM App Connect Enterprise, IBM API Connect, IBM DataPower Gateway, and HTTP client applications.

When you push a REST API to IBM API Connect, you can either create a new REST API definition or, if the REST API definition exists on the IBM API Connect system, you can replace the latest version of the definition with the new definition of your REST API. The title and version of the REST API are used to identify the REST API definition on the IBM API Connect system.

You can push one or more deployed REST APIs to IBM API Connect by using the IBM App Connect Enterprise web user interface, the mqsipushapis command, or the administration REST API, as described in the following topics: