Recently a new version of the WSO2 API Manager was introduced. This article describes the changes in this new version. Since it is a minor release, the last version was 1.8.0, there are some smaller improvements but nothing really major. That does not however, make it an uninteresting release, quite the contrary.
What’s New?
The following paragraphs give a high-level overview of the most important new functionality in the API Manager.
Swagger 2.0
Until now the supported version of Swagger (a tool to let developers discover your APIs) was version 1.2. The new version of the API Manager supports the current version 2.0 of Swagger. The Swagger UI is integrated in the API Manager itself. For more information please see the WSO2 Swagger 2.0 documentation online
Third party key manager
The key manager has always been part of the API Manager (a feature that is also part of the WSO2 Identity Server) and is one of the four components of the product (next to the API Publisher, Store and Gateway). Installing the WSO2 IS was the only solution that was supported for an ‘external’ key manager. Now it is also possible to integrate a third party key manager in the API Manager. For more details, view the WSO2 documentation.
Copy APIs
Another exiting possibility is that is now possible to copy APIs to a zip file and install them on another API manager. You download a special web application (api-import-export.war) and copy it to the [APIM_HOME]/repository/deployment/server/webapps. Basically what the webapp does is expose two REST APis to export and import the APIs. Please see the documentation with regards to the way to do this. The steps are described in the documentation.
Custom URLs
The ability to expose the API Store, Publisher and Gateway on your own custom URLs. This means that you can have the functionality of the API Manager integrated in your website or web presence.
Share applications/subscriptions within users of the same group
Previously you could share applications within the organization (tenant) so all users of tenant ‘ACME’ will see each other’s applications and subscriptions. Now you can change this default behavior by defining logical groups
Figure 3 Using the UI to configure BAM
Configure WSO2 BAM graphically
The WSO2 Business Activity Monitor is used for data gathering and analysis. The configuration of BAM used to be something that needed to be done at the command line by changing and adding lines to configuration files and copying a file. The documentationexplains the process.
Maintain the API version within the API context
The new version of the API Manager now allows you to define the version before the context (e.g. 1.0.0/servicename) allowing the grouping of API based on the versions. How this is done can be read here.
Improved functionality when publishing an API to multiple Gateways.
Instead of an API being published to all available Gateway environments, you can now select the Gateways that you want to publish to through the User interface. Here is thedescription of how you do that.
Support for NTLM grant type
Also new in this version is the support for NTLM grants. NTLM is the successor of the authentication protocol in Microsoft LAN Manager (LANMAN), an older Microsoft product, and attempts to provide backwards compatibility with LANMAN. You can obtain an access token to your API in an API Manager instance running on Windows by providing a valid NTLM token as an authorization grant. Read more about it (and sample code) in the API Manager documentation.
Compatibility
The API Manager 1.9.0 is based on Carbon 4.2.0 and therefore should be compatible with all WSO2 products based on the same Carbon Version. The following products that have been tested with this version and are compatible are:
- WSO2 Governance Registry 4.6.0
- WSO2 Identity Server 5.0.0 SP01
- WSO2 Business Activity Monitor 2.5.0
Want more information?
You can find the API manager at the WSO2 website where you can download the latest version yourself. In order to find out how to use the new features (some requires some changes to be made to the configuration files) please visit the documentation of the API Manager. Furthermore, check the WSO2 website for webinars about the API Manager (both planned and canned).
