Table of contents
1.
Introduction
2.
Azure API management 
3.
Azure API Management components
4.
Azure API Management creation
5.
What exactly is a Product in API Management?
6.
What are Groups in API Management?
7.
Benefits of using Azure API Management service
8.
Frequently Asked Questions
8.1.
What do you understand about Azure Resource Manager?
8.2.
What is Azure Redis Cache?
8.3.
Why is the Azure Diagnostics API required?
9.
Conclusion
Last Updated: Mar 27, 2024

Azure API Management

Author Shivani Singh
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Introduction

Advancements in the web, social media, and mobile have resulted in a rapid increase in the number of APIs in recent years.

APIs are tools that allow businesses to connect data and services with their customers, employees, and partners. As the multitude of APIs increases, so do the challenges. These are things like security, performance, manageability, documentation, and so on. Before delving into the API Management Service, let's take a look at why we must use it and what benefits it offers using an example.

Assume we are creating an API for a reservation application. In our API, it can be consumed by both internal and external applications. For example, let's use Azure Function to create our API and endpoints with a Consumption plan for the API application.

So, what will we do if our APIs are used more than expected from within or outside the organization? What if we don't realize it until it's too late? What happens when we open our API to the outside world and it receives thousands of requests per second? How will we handle so many requests?

Azure API Management

Here comes API into the role play. Let's dig deeper into this blog and find solutions to our problems. 

Azure API management 

To address issues such as API security, authentication, and access control, Documentation, Caching, IP Restrictions, Monitoring, Versioning, Before we open our API to the outside world and developers, we need to set up an API gateway and create good documentation. When APIs are first used, we must make the necessary performance and monitoring improvements to ensure that the API runs smoothly.

In short, we must solve these and similar issues in each project. You can use Azure API Management for this, which allows us to centrally manage our Microsoft APIs.

Azure API Management flow

Azure API Management is a dependable, secure, and scalable method for publishing, consuming, and managing APIs on the Microsoft Azure platform. Azure API Management includes all of the tools needed for end-to-end API management. It ensures optimal API performance, and paths and imposes usage, authentication, and other features. SwaggerHub incorporates Azure API Management, making it simple to export API definitions to Azure. This way, you can design your APIs on SwaggerHub, then deploy them to your Azure API Management instance from SwaggerHub, keeping the APIs up to date with any design changes. 

APIM allows us to manage our APIs, define policies for publication, and set usage restrictions for our web and cloud-based applications. We can easily perform all of these operations via a centralized interface. API Management enables organizations to publish APIs to external, ally, and internal devs in order to maximize the value of their data and services.Why is Azure API Management used?

Its primary function is to provide a centralized interface for creating, provisioning, and managing API for web and cloud applications and services. Users can use Azure API Management to:

  • Monitor API health, identifying errors, configuring throttling, rate limits, and more for each API.
  • Provides information on how APIs are used.
  • Defining end-to-end API usage policies and creating and managing user roles
  • Provides a centralized interface for consolidating and managing thousands of APIs from various platforms.
  • Can provide authentication and access control process for managing and ensuring API access and utilization security.

Azure API Management components

There are three Azure API management components. Let us see each one of them in detail.

Developer Portal 

The developer portal includes an automatically generated API catalog, documentation, and sample code. A developer portal is a location where API users can find and gain knowledge about API details. The developer can locate the API key as well as provide a console the order to test API endpoints.

APIs Gateway

API Gateway is a frontend that acts as a proxy in the upper layer of our backend services. All requests are routed through the gateway to the appropriate services, and the results are returned. This layer handles authentication, authorization, and restrictions. When a request arrives that meets the validations and constraints, it is routed to the backend. It allows us to quickly access requirements such as caching, logging, request and response transition, and analytical data.

Azure Portal  

The Azure Portal is a graphical user interface that lets programmers configure and manage their APIs. It enables us to manage users, analytical data, policy definitions, and APIs in different projects as products.

Azure API Management creation

First, we open the Azure Portal and type "API Management" into the search bar.

Resource group: Pick the resource group for which the resource will be created.

Region: We choose the area for the resource. We proceed by selecting "West Europe," which is the nearest region to us. Please choose your nearest region!

Resouce name: The title of the resource is entered here. For the APIM, a URL with this name will be created.

Pricing Tier: We select which pricing tier to use. In our example, we'll use the Consumption plan, which is Lightweight and Serverless.

 

We will come across this screen when API management occurs.

Let's go over the sections we'll be using here in order.

Backends: Our APIs manage the resources that we use for backend services. It can be a Custom or an Azure Resource.

Named Value: It is similar to a Key-Value store. We can maintain the values we'll be using in common here. Using PlaintText, Secret, or Key-Vault, we can define named values.

Subscription: This is the subscription key that is given to people who make API requests in order to secure API access. When creating a subscription, we can select all APIs, Products, or a specific API.

Product: In this section, we can organize our APIs and make policies and subscription services for our products.

API: This is the segment where we define our APIs. APIs are created from endpoint definitions that are absorbed by the client for HTTP requests. For instance, ListProduct, GetProduct, and DeleteProduct.

Policies: The policy definition is an XML file that explains a series of inbound and outbound declarations for each API or API operation. In the definition window, you can edit the XML directly.

What exactly is a Product in API Management?

APIs are exposed to developers through products. API Management products have one or more APIs and are labeled with a title, summary, and terms of use. Products can be either open or closed. Protected products require a subscription before they can be used, whereas open products are used without it. A product can be published once it is ready for use by developers. Developers can view (and, in the case of protected products, subscribe to) it once it is published. Subscription approval can be configured at the product level to require administrator approval or to be auto-approved.

What are Groups in API Management?

Groups are used to handle product visibility to developers. The following system groups are immutable in API Management:

Administrators: This group includes Azure subscription administrators. API Management service instances are managed by administrators, who create the APIs, operations, and items that developers use.

Developers: This category includes authenticated developer portal users. Customers who use your APIs to build applications are known as developers. Developers are allowed access to the developer console and are able to create applications that call API operations.

Guests: Guests are unverified developer gateway users, such as prospective customers visiting an API Management instance's developer portal. They can be given read-only access, such as the ability to watch but not call APIs.

Benefits of using Azure API Management service

  • The Azure API management service offers numerous security and reliability features. For example, depending on the API access plan you choose (free or paid), the number of calls allowed is limited.
  • Throttling is used to prevent Denial of Service (DOS) attacks.
  • Backend services are secured by limiting access with API keys.
  • Employ advanced security measures such as JWT tokens, certificates, and other credentials.
  • In short, the Azure API Management system allows you to transform your APIs on the fly without changing any code.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do you understand about Azure Resource Manager?

Azure Resource Manager, a service provided by Azure, manages and deploys applications in Azure. The management layer aids in the creation, modification, and deletion of resources in the Azure subscription account. It is helpful for monitoring access controls, locks, and resource security.

What is Azure Redis Cache?

Azure Redis Cache is in the Redis cache system provided by Azure that aids web application performance optimization. For the first request, data is retrieved from the database server and saved in the Redis cache. Data is retrieved from the Redis cache on subsequent requests. By utilizing Azure Cloud, Azure Redis cache offers considerable and secure caching mechanisms.

Why is the Azure Diagnostics API required?

The Azure Diagnostics API collects diagnostic data from Azure applications, such as system event logs and performance analysis. For the cloud service roles, Azure Diagnostics must be enabled. The collected data can then be used to generate visual chart representations for better monitoring and performance metric alerts.

Conclusion

To conclude this blog, firstly we discussed Azure API Management. We also discussed why is this used. And then we looked at the components of the Azure APIM, the creation of Azure APIM, and the meaning of products and groups in APIM, and lastly, we looked into the benefits of Azure API Management. 

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