You can manage the lifecycle of Web applications you create in WSO2 App Manager as described below.
Introduction to app lifecycle management
The application (app) approval process involves all the states in an application lifecycle from creation to retirement. Your actions are restricted based on the permissions that are assigned to you. The following topics illustrate the application approval process.
App lifecycle management action definitions
You can carry out the following actions in the application approval process.
| Action | Definition |
|---|---|
| Submit | Creator submits newly created apps to be reviewed. |
| Approve | The reviewer approves apps that pass the review process. |
| Reject | The reviewer rejects mobile apps that fail the review process. |
| Publish | The publisher publishes approved apps. All published apps are visible in the App Store. |
| Unpublish | The publisher un-publishes apps if required. Unpublished apps are temporarily removed from the App Store but are supported by App Manager. Furthermore, you can re-publish these apps to the Store whenever needed. |
| Depreciate | The publisher deprecates mobile apps. All deprecated apps are automatically removed from the Store, to stop all new installations. However, these mobile apps are supported by App Manager. |
| Retire | The publisher retires apps. Retired apps are not supported by App Manager in the future. In such instances, all retired apps are automatically removed from the Store, to stop all new installations. |
App lifecycle management based on user roles
The transitions in the app approval process, together with the permissions needed for each state are listed as follows:
| Transition Process | Allowed Roles | Allowed Actions |
|---|---|---|
| Creating a new app | Administrator Internal/Publisher | Publish |
| Submitting newly created apps | Administrator | Submit |
| Reviewing submitted apps | Administrator Internal/Review | Approve/ Reject |
| Publishing approved apps | Administrator Internal/Publisher | Publish |
| Re-submitting rejected apps | Administrator Internal/Publisher | Submit |
| Unpublishing published apps | Administrator Internal/Publisher | Unpublish |
| Re-publishing unpublished apps | Administrator Internal/Publisher | Publish |
| Deprecating unpublished apps | Administrator Internal/Publisher | Deprecate |
| Deprecating published apps | Administrator Internal/Publisher | Deprecate |
| Retiring deprecated apps | Administrator Internal/Publisher | Retire |
App lifecycle management states
After adding the application to the publisher, you need to promote its lifecycle state to published state, to publish it as follows.
Once an application is added to App Manager, it is added to the registry as an asset, and a lifecycle is attached to the application. The lifecycle state for a newly created application is 'Created'. You can change the state to 'In-Review', which will automatically initialize a workflow event. Once an admin user approves the workflow event, then lifecycle state moves to the 'Published' state and will appear in the Store for you to consume.
Once an application reaches the 'Published' state, an API resource will be created under the <PRODUCT_HOME>/repository/deployment/server/synapse-configs/default/api/ directory. Name of the file will be {app created user}–{app name}_v{version}.xml. This is the REST endpoint, which will be invoked once the gateway URL is accessed.