What is the IBM z/OS Connect API requester?

Generate and deploy z/OS Connect API requesters to your z/OS Connect native server so your z/OS applications can call HTTP APIs, with JSON payloads, through z/OS Connect.

To enable z/OS applications to call HTTP APIs, you must create an API requester that is deployed in IBM® z/OS Connect to facilitate API calls.

A IBM z/OS Connect API requester needs a number of artifacts:

  • An API requester archive file WAR to perform data mapping and transformation, between JSON and language structures, for HTTP API calls by z/OS applications.
  • Language copybooks that are used in the z/OS applications to construct the API request and read its response.
  • API information file: The OpenAPI definition that contains information of an API that z/OS applications want to call.

These artifacts are generated from OpenAPI 3 documents using the API requester Gradle plug-in. For more information, see Generating the artifacts for an API requester.

In addition, z/OS Connect native server needs to be connected to your z subsystem and with the request endpoint as shown in Figure 1. The API endpoint is a HTTP endpoint that is called by z/OS applications through z/OS Connect.

Figure 1. z/OS Connect API requester overview
Diagram showing how the API requester connects IBM z/OS Connect to the z/OS address space so that z/OS applications can call an API.

For more information on how-to create and deploy z/OS Connect API requester, see Calling APIs from z/OS applications.