Getting Started with Azure API Management (APIM)

What is azure API management?

API Management (APIM) is indeed a technique for developing coherent and contemporary API portals for existing back-end facilities. API Management enables entities to compile APIs to multiple, partner, and organizational developers in order to maximize the value of their information and applications. Corporations are seeking to expand their operational activities as a digital service, opening up new streams, acquiring new customers, and continuing to drive greater interaction.

API Management improves the productivity of an API software system by focusing on development firm interaction, business intelligence, predictive analysis, safety, and security. Users could use Azure API Management to allow a massive API strategy focused on almost any backend.

In this article, we are going to discuss deeper insights of the Azure API management and also the key elements in a more detailed way.

Why azure API management?

Administrators create Interfaces in order to use API Management. Thus every API is made up from one or even more operational activities, so each API could be used with one or even more product lines. Using an API, designers must first adhere to a product with a certain API, after that they could then consider the API’s procedure, subject to any intended message that could be in place. To be an expert as a designer, Azure Architect Design Training will dive into deeper insights of this exciting system.

• Common circumstances involve safeguarding proposed optimization by restricting access with User credentials, inhibiting DOS attacks with throttling, and functional disability security policies like JWT token verification.
• Empowering ISV companion ecosystem services through rapid partner onboarding through the web interface as well as the creation of an API exterior to detach from inner integrations which are not ready for partner consumption.
• Operating an inbuilt API program provides a central repository for all the company to interact more about accessibility and updated modifications to APIs, as well as chaining direct exposure concerning organizational accounts, while still providing a strong channel in between Rest api as well as the backend.

Move faster with unified API management

• This united API management platform acts as a multi-tenant for all the API among different atmospheres or ecosystems.
• API architectures are being adopted by today’s new companies to boost production. Optimize ones work throughout hybrid as well as multicloud contexts by managing all of your APIs inside a centralized location.
• Execute API gateways alongside APIs organized in Azure, some clouds, and even on to optimize API flow of traffic. Encounter legal and management specifications while benefiting from a centralized leadership experience as well as full visibility throughout all local and global APIs.
• Apply verification, approval, and usage limits to regulate what resources and applications are revealed to staff, partner organizations, and clients.
• Using API-first strategies, you can develop applications faster and provide instant benefits to customers. API criticizing, API modifications and archiving, and computerized API supporting documents help to detach front- as well as back-end team members.
• Develop a developer platform that can be customized for all of your APIs. APIs can be easily managed and shared to internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, and clients.
• Create exterior for one’s back-end facilities to instantly convert legacy cloud services into advanced REST APIs.

When to use azure API management?

The IT sector is transitioning away from cloud architecture and toward middleware frameworks. The following are some of the advantages of such a novel strategy:

• Autonomous advancement and independence pick technology – Designers could even work on multiple microservice architectures simultaneously and pick the best technologies for the reality of the situation.
• Microservices could be revised under their own schedule due to one’s autonomous implementation and discharge cycle.
• Independent microservices could indeed measure individually, lowering overall costs while increasing dependability.
• Simplification – Smaller service providers seem to be simpler to comprehend, which speeds up the development process, running tests, troubleshooting, and release.
• Fault exclusion – When a microservice fails, that doesn’t have to result in malfunction of many other offerings.

How to use azure API management?

The primary purpose of Azure API Management would provide a centralized environment for developing, provisioning, and managing API for cloud – based platforms apps and services. Users could use Azure API Management to;

• Monitoring API health, anomaly detection, configuring tethering, rate limits, than on each API.
• Gives information on how APIs are used.
• Establishing user roles, as well as identifying API benefits of having from start to finish
• Provides centralized functionality for configuring and managing millions of APIs throughout multiple platforms.
• Include an access control process for managing and ensuring API access as well as consumption safety.

Is Azure API management free?

You could also get a free Azure trial. No higher income support is needed for US government agencies to buy Azure Public services from a license leading provider or straight via a pay-as-you-go online service. Some services are provided lifetime free and some others for the specified time interval i.e for 12 months such as azure key vault, azure database for mysql and azure database for postgresql, etc. The free services that you can enjoy are Azure logic apps, azure kubernetes service, azure app service, and many more.

Microsoft azure API management pricing

Get the same pay-as-you-go sale prices by visiting the Azure website rather than speaking with an Azure sales specialist. When users buy directly from the manufacturer, you get the following benefits:

• Handle your Azure ecosystem on your own or with the assistance of a partner.
• You will be billed on a monthly basis.
• Will have the choice of picking the right Azure pricing planning.

There are 3 levels in the azure pricing chart: basic, standard and premium. One needs to select the level based on our need for their organization and processes. In order to get a deep understanding of the pricing table for the azure api management please go through the following link azure pricing table.

How does azure API management work?

API Management (APIM) enables collaboration in publishing APIs to multiple, partner, as well as internal programmers in order to maximize the value of their information and applications. API Management leads to the improvement of an API system by focusing on development firm engagement, business intelligence, big data, safety, and prevention.

The azure API management framework consists of the following components, they are:

• API management products:

APIs are exposed to programmers through products. APIM products can have yet another or even more APIs and would be labeled with such a label, summary, and definitions of use. Products could be either open or closed.

When a customer subscribes, they receive a subscriber key which is valid for just about any API within this item. Subscription authorization can be designed at the component level to involve administrator permission or being auto-approved.

• API Management APIs:

Every other API refers more specifically to the back-end provider which enforces the API, as well as its activities track to a back-end provider’s operational activities.

• API Management Operations:

Most every API encompasses a series of processes that designers can use. API activities correspond to the activities carried out by all the back-end system. APIM activities are infinitely configurable, adjusting URL modeling, query or path variables, request as well as response material, and procedure reaction caching. Rate limits, quantitative restrictions, and IP limitation regulations could also be enacted just at API or with an individual basis.

• Groups:

Groups have been used to maintain a product’s accessibility to developers. APIM’s unchangeable system organizations are as follows:

• Administrators– The whole group includes Azure membership administrators. API Management assisted are managed by managers, who create the APIs, operational activities, and items that designers use.

• Developers– This category includes verified developer platform users. Clients who use the APIs to develop tools are known as developers. Designers are allowed entry to a web interface but are able to create apps which declare API operations.

• Guests– Unencrypted developer platform subscribers, like potential clients attending a Managed Services instance’s development firm portal, fit into that category. Those who can be given read-only entry, like the opportunity to examine but just not deem APIs.

Developers:

During an API Management performance support, designers constitute the user profiles. Users can create or consider inviting designers to participate, or they might register via the Developer portal. Every other developer would be a participant with one or even more groups and therefore can adhere to features that offer these other groups exposure.

Polices: Policies are really a potent API Management functionality that enables the Azure portal to configure the API’s behavior patterns.

Effective policies involve widely implemented from XML with JSON as well as call restricting to minimize the number of callers from the developer, among many others.

Developer Portal:

Developers could indeed discover your APIs, visualize as well as call operations, but also sign up to products and through developer portal. Potential customers visiting its developer platform to learn about APIs and operational activities, as well as sign up. This same URL besides your web interface can be found on the center console of one’s API Management performance support inside the Azure portal.

It is critical to have a solid grasp with Azure APIM definitions and where the various entities interact with one another. APIs are typically consumed by multiple stakeholders or services. When backend systems are added to Azure Managed Services, the correlating APIM APIs (or Frontend APIs) are generated within the APIM instance. APIM generates APIM API Processes for Rest APIs revealed by backend services.

APIM APIs as well as APIM API Operational activities could both be used this to define APIM Initiatives, that can then be used to apprehend and reshape user interactions. API APIs can also be used to monitor transformations by implementing modifications and variants, as well as to implement verification via OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, or Azure Active Directory authentication (AAD).

APIM Products are identified by administrators to team underpinning back – end services. APIM Devices are relatively flexible because back – end services could be delegated to numerous APIM Products.

You could indeed clarify APIM Initiatives and authentication on the reach of an APIM Product, that will be implemented to all allocated APIM APIs. Utilizing rate limits as well as utilization quotas on a collection of APIM APIs is an amazing illustration of how APIM Products excel.

APIM Subscriptions enable exterior API users to be onboarded and made available with APIM Products inside a transparent manner.

APIM Subscriptions, as well as specific APIM Product but also APIM API setup, are being used to avoid unverified API calls. Consumers with just an energetic subscription could indeed acquire subscription keys that must be sent to APIM for each API call. Utilizing APIM Initiatives, administrators could even install items such as rate limits and/or quotas depending on the objective of the fundamental APIM Product. Likewise, subscriptions could be configured to necessitate manual authorization, which is used to connect individual business processes whereas taking on new API buyers.

Now you understand how well the essential elements of Azure API Management contribute to the production of generous results for businesses.

How to deploy azure API management?

Azure API Management comes with the multi-region deployment feature thereby, allowing API publishing companies to transmit a solitary Azure API management service through any set of Azure regions that are endorsed. The multi-region assisted request latency as interpreted by widely distant API customers and enhances resource utilization when one province goes down.

A new Azure API Management service alone has one unit at first for a singular Azure region, as well as for the Primary region. New functionality can be placed in either the Primary or Secondary areas. Each Primary and Secondary region would have an API Management gateway element installed.

Incoming API packets are forwarded to the nearest region instantly. When a region goes down, API queries would be redirected from around the failure region towards the next nearest entry point.

Just the API Management portal element is available in most countries. The service management element as well as the developer portal are now only available inside the Primary region. As a result, if the Primary region goes down, availability towards the developer portal and also the power to change setup will be limited till the Primary province is restored.

Whereas the Primary region has been unavailable, based On secondary regions would then help to lead API traffic using a more recent configuration. Empower zone redundancy if you want to increase the usability and resilience of Primary and Secondary regions.

Moreover the availability comes into existence in the premium tier of the Azure API management.

Now we will explore how to deploy the API service management to a location and also how to delete it from that particular location.

Deploying API management service to a particular location

The following are the steps to deploy the API management service to a preferred location. They are:

• Browse to the API Management service within the Azure portal as well as and choose Locations from the menu.
• Within the top bar, click + Add.
• Choose a destination first from the drop-down menu.
• Choose the amount of sized Enterprises to be used in location.
• Facilitate availability zones if desired.
• Customize network virtualization settings throughout the location if another API Management case is deployed in such a virtual network. Choose an established virtual network, subnet, but also public Destination ip inside the location.
• To verify, click Add.
• Repeat this procedure until all locations have been configured.
• To begin the deployment process, pick Save from the top bar.

Deleting an API management service in a location

• Browse with your API Management service inside the Azure portal and select the Destinations option from the menu.
• Activate a context menu for both the location users want to remove by clicking the… button only at the right side of the table. Choose the Delete option.
• Affirm the removal and then click the Save button in order to save your changes.

How to secure azure API management?

Here we are going to learn about the protection of the azure api management by using the OAuth 2.0 authorization with the Azure HD.

First go through the quick steps and then after explaining each step in depth.

• In Azure AD, create a new application (backend-app) to reflect the API.
• A further application (client-app) should be registered in Azure AD to depict a client application which wants to call the API.
• Enable the client-app to call the backend-app by granting permissions in Azure AD.
• Customize the Developer Console for using OAuth 2.0 user authorization to contact the API.
• To verify the OAuth token for each user requests, append the validate-jwt policy.

1. Registering an application in Azure HD:

To use Azure AD to safeguard an API, first create an application in Azure AD which really symbolizes the API. The steps that obey to sign up the application, go to the Azure portal.

• To sign up for the application, just go to Azure portal. App registrations can be found by searching for them and selecting them.
• Choose new registration.
• Whenever the Register an application page appears, insert contact details for the application: In the name field give the proper application name because it will be displayed to the users. For the supported account types select the one that meets your needs.
• Consider leaving the Redirect URI field blank.
• To develop the application, click Register.
• Discover the Application (client) ID value upon the App Overview page or save it for later.
• Choose Expose an API and leave the Software ID URI at its default value. Make a note of such a worth for subsequent use.
• To access its Append a scope page, click the Add a scope button. After which, establish a new scope which the API supports (for example, Files.Read).
• To generate the scope, click the Add scope button. Repeat the above step until all of your API’s scopes have been added.
• Whenever the scopes are finished, take note of them just for later use.

• Registering in Azure HD in order to depict the client application:

Each client application which uses the API must be enrolled in Azure AD as an application. In this case, the client application seems to be the API Management developer portal’s Developer Console.

In order to depict the developer console, just register for a client application in Azure HD in the following way.

• Just go to the Azure portal in order to register for the application.
• Then search for the app registrations
• Click on the new registrations
• The registration page will be displayed asking you to fill in some information such as name and supported account types.
• Just leave the URL field blank by selecting the redirect URL as web.
• Then click on the rigter to create the new application.
• Consider the Application (client) ID value on the app Overview page and save it for later. Develop a client secret to be used by this application in the next step. Select Certificates & secret plans from list of webpage for the client app, then New client secret.
• Include a description under Add a client secret. Choose Add after determining when the key must expire.

When you’ve finished creating the secret, make a note of the key value for later use.

• Permissions granting in Azure HD:

After you’ve registered two applications to reflect the API and the Developer Console, grant permissions to a client-app so it can call the backend-app.

• To grant permissions to your client application, navigate to the Azure portal. App registrations can be found by searching for them and selecting them.
• Select your client app. Then, in the app’s page list, select API permissions.
• Choose Add a Permission.
• Pick My APIs under Select an API, and then locate and select your backend-app.
• Identify the suitable permissions for the backend-app under Delegated Permissions, after which click Add permissions.
• Customize Grant admin consent for your-tenant-name> on the API permissions page to grant consent on behalf of all users in this directory.

• Enabling  OAuth 2.0 in the Developer console:

Just follow the below steps in order to enable the OAuth 2.0 user authorization in the developer console. Theta are:

• Navigate to your API Management instance in the Azure portal.
• Choose OAuth 2.0 > Add.
• Enter a Display name as well as a summary.
• Insert a placeholder value, like http://localhost, for the Client registration page URL. The Client registration page URL directs users to a page where they can generate and customize one’s own accounts for OAuth 2.0 services which promote it. Because consumers in this example need not start creating and customizing their own accounts, users were using a temporary replacement instead.
• Select Authorization code from the Authorization grant types drop-down menu.
• Enter the URLs for the Authorization endpoint and the Token endpoint. These values can be found on the Endpoints page of your Azure AD tenant. Return to the App registrations page and choose Endpoints.
• Copy and paste the OAuth 2.0 Authorization Endpoint into the Authorization endpoint URL text box. Under the Authorization request method, select POST.
• Copy and paste the OAuth 2.0 Token Endpoint into the Token endpoint URL text box.
• If you’re using v1 endpoints, include a body parameter called resource. Use the back-end app’s Application ID as the value for this parameter.
• If you use v2 endpoints, fill in the Default scope field with the scope you created for the backend-app.
• After that, enter the client credentials. These are the client-app credentials.
• Use the client-Application app’s ID as the Client ID.
• Use the key you established recently for the client-app as the Client secret.
• The redirect url for the authorization code grant type comes immediately after the client secret. Make a note of this web address.
• Choose Create.
• Return to your Azure Active Directory client-app registration and select Authentication.
• Under Platform configurations, click Add a platform, select Web as the type, paste the redirect url into the Redirect URI field, and then click the Configure button to save.

The Developer Console could now acquire login credentials from Azure AD after you’ve configured an OAuth 2.0 authorization server.

Next step is to encourage user authorization via OAuth 2.0 for your API. This tells the Developer Console that now it requires to acquire an access token on behalf of a user prior to actually making API calls.

• Navigate to APIs in your API Management instance.
• Choose the API you want to safeguard. As an example, consider the Echo API.
• Navigate to the Settings menu.
• Select OAuth 2.0 under Security, and then the OAuth 2.0 server you configured earlier.
• Choose Save.

• Calling the API from the developer console:

After users empower OAuth 2.0 user authorization on your API, the Developer Console will acquire an access token on user’s behalf prior to actually calling the API.

• Navigate to any API procedure in the developer portal and click Try it. This will take you to the Developer Console.
• Take note of the special product in the Authorization section, which corresponds to the authorization server users merely added.
• Individuals are provoked to sign into the Azure AD tenant after selecting Authorization code from the authorization drop-down list. You may not be prompted when you’re already signed in to your account.
• After an effective sign-in, an Authorization frame with just an access token from Azure AD is decided to add to the request.
• To successfully call the API, select Send.

• Configuring the JWT Validation policy to the authorized requests:

Whenever a user tries to make a call from the Developer Console however at that point, the customers are allowed to sign in. The Developer Console acquires an access token on the client’s screen and contains this in the API call.

And what if somebody else calls the API without or with an invalid token? For example, if you try to call the API without the Authorization header, the call will still be successful. The possible explanation seems to be that API Management somehow doesn’t currently affirm the access token. The Authorization header is passed to a back-end API.

How to backup azure API management?

As connectivity becomes more complicated, more components will fail. This is especially true given how commonly we change. Occasionally we consider upgrading the facilities, and sometimes we simply rearrange items in order to meet the latest or updated requirements. The very important query is how one can accomplish it without any complexity or confusion.

The best, however most likely greatest expensive, way is to install a completely latest infrastructure. We will not end up making modifications to the current one, but will instead create the new one of these and evaluate this before placing it into manufacturing. Here will learn on how to enhance Azure API Management as well as make copies of all information from either one trying to run instance to the next, as well as ensure that something related to Azure is in order.

If you want to perform the backup operation, one needs to create two instances such as source and target instances such as apim-src and apim-dest.

One will be used to fetch the backup, and the other will be used to retrieve the backup. We need to place two inside the identical resource groups, as it helps to delete anything later.

• Creating of resource groups

New-AzResourceGroup -Name “apim-rg” -Location “Canada”

• Creating Azure API management Source resource

New-AzApiManagement -ResourceGroupName “apim-rg” -Name “apim-src” -Location “canada” -Organization “svenmalvik.com” -AdminEmail “sven@malvik.de”

• Creating Azure API management target source

New-AzApiManagement -ResourceGroupName “apim-rg” -Name “apim-dest” -Location “canada” -Organization “svenmalvik.com” -AdminEmail “sven@malvik.de”

Creating the Storage account for backup:

If a backup operation is performed, one needs to store the backuped data in another container. So we will also learn the format for storing the backup information.

Creating the storage account for the backup data

$storageAccount = New-AzStorageAccount -ResourceGroupName “apim-rg” -Name “apimsvenmalviksa” -SkuName Standard_LRS -Location “Canada”

Create the containers for the backups

New-AzStorageContainer -Name “apim-backups” -Context $storageAccount.Context -Permission blob

Now we will go through how to perform backup as well as restore using the powershell.

One needs to run a backup command that could now be executed. We bring two back-ups. One is for the source Azure API Management instance and the other is for target instance. I’m doing something like this since there is proclivity for mingling parameters.

We can ultimately create a printout from the target and reclaim it to the source rather than having taken a backup from source. If this occurs and overwrite the source, so that we can always have a backup which I can recover if necessary.

• Taking backup from the source:

Backup-AzApiManagement -ResourceGroupName “apim-rg” -Name “apim-src” -StorageContext $storageAccount.Context -TargetContainerName “apim-backups” -TargetBlobName “apim-src-backup”

• Taking backup from the target:

Backup-AzApiManagement -ResourceGroupName “apim-rg” -Name “apim-dest” -StorageContext $storageAccount.Context -TargetContainerName “apim-backups” -TargetBlobName “apim-dest-backup”

At last we can restore the backup data by using the following command.

• Restore backup:

Restore-AzApiManagement -ResourceGroupName “apim-rg” -Name “apim-dest” -StorageContext $storageAccount.Context -SourceContainerName “apim-backups” -SourceBlobName “apim-src-backup”

Microsoft announced recently that even the latest launch of the Visual Studio Code enlargement for API Management now enables the capacity to debug policies constructed in the Azure API Management services in the actual environment.

Users can need most of the debugging characteristics you’d anticipate from an advanced runtime environment while using this major update:

• In the API Management instances, start remote debugging.
• Establish breakpoints throughout the policy code.
• Statements as well as expressions that are stepped into/over
• Examine the query context’s properties.
• Examine policy errors as they occur during execution.

How to set up azure API management?

Azure API Management (APIM) assists individuals in publishing APIs to indirect, partner, as well as internal builders in order to maximize the value of their information and applications. API Management leads to the improvement of an API system by focusing on development firm interaction, actionable insights, business intelligence, safety, and security.

APIM allows users to create and maintain advanced API interfaces for emerging backend services organised in any location.

This beginner guide walks you through the steps of launching a unique API Management feature through the Azure portal.

Meanwhile if you don’t have azure subscription, create your free account before you gte started.

Steps for setting up the Azure API management.

• Sign into your Azure account, create a new service by performing the following activities.

1. Within the Azure portal dashboard, pick the create a resource option.
2. A page will be displayed, in that select the integration section followed by the API management.
3. The API management service page will be shown, you need to fill all the mandatory information and then select the create button.

• Search For the created API management instance.

1. In the Azure portal you need to search for the API management services.
2. A page will be displayed related to the API management services, you need to pick your API management instance.
3. You can even evaluate or review your settings under the overview section.

Once the API management service is online, you can kick start your work.

However there are also options to remove if you don’t want the resource groups in future. For this you need to follow a few steps to clean up the resources that you do not require anymore.

• Head over to the Azure portal and then search for the resource groups.
• In the resource groups, you need to select your resource group.
• Then select the delete resource group.
• You need to type the name of your resource group and then after you can click on the delete option in order to clean up your resources.

What is the azure API management gateway?

Azure API management gateway is one of the key components of the Azure API management architecture. It helps in performing the following set of activities such as:

• Accepts API requests and forwards those to the backend.
• API keys, JWT tokens, documents, as well as other credibility are validated.
• Utilization quotas as well as rate restrictions are enforced.
• Converts your API mostly on fly without requiring any code changes.
• Backend reactions are cached where they are configured.
• Metadata is referred to in log files for basic purposes.

Is Azure API management paas or saas?

Classification is accomplished depending on the type of resource provided – IAAS, PAAS, SAAS, IPAAS, FAAS, and so on. After all, communication isn’t free; users pay for what clients use, focusing on the expenses represented per unit depending on how long as well as how much users use it. This, in turn, helps to decrease speed to market and exploit the resources available.

Microsoft developed Azure APIM as a management information to alleviate necessity managing APIs. It is indeed a PaaS provider in which users pay per the tier they select.

How to get an azure API management subscription key?

In order to know your Azure API management subscription key you need to go through the following process.

• First go to the Azure portal and then select the API management service.
• Under the APIs go to the subscription field.
• You need to press the add subscription.
• You need to enter a name, select the API as scope and then you need to select your API under API.
• Then click on the save button, it will create a subscription for your selected API.
• You need to trace out your subscription among the list of subscriptions available.
• After locating your subscription press the show/hide keys option.
• The subscription key is visible and you can copy it from the primary key field.

Conclusion

In this blog post we discussed Azure API management in depth. Had any doubts please drop your queries in the comments section? We will definitely answer your queries.

Belayet Hossain

I’m a tech enthusiast, entrepreneur, digital marketer and professional blogger equipped with skills in Digital Marketing, SEO, SEM, SMM, and lead generation. My objective is to simplify technology for you through detailed guides and reviews. I discovered WordPress while setting up my first business site and instantly became enamored. When not crafting websites, making content, or helping clients enhance their online ventures, I usually take care of my health and spend time with family, and explore the world. Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or read my complete biography.