Deploying Grouped APIs Using a Microgateway

WSO2 API Cloud allows you to add labels to group APIs together. If you have a business requirement where you want to group a set of APIs together, first you need to create a label and attach it to all the APIs that you want to group together. For example, create a label named prod to group all production APIs.

Once you add labels, you can also use any label to configure a Microgateway so that only APIs with that particular label get deployed via the Microgateway.

Let's take a look at a sample business use case to understand why it is useful to group APIs with labels, and then have a look at how you can use WSO2 API Cloud to group APIs with labels. The following topics walk you through the sample business use case and how you can use labelling to address the use case:

Introduction

Assume that an organization has 4 Microgateway instances as follows for dev, test, and production environments:

• 1 Microgateway instance as the test environment.

• 2 Microgateway instances as dev environments.

• 1 Microgateway instance as the production environment.

Let's also assume that the organization has a number of APIs and there is a requirement to deploy APIs in the 4 Microgateway instances as follows:

• Deploy all existing APIs in the test environment

• Deploy APIs related to ongoing development in the dev environment.

• Deploy the APIs that are exposed for production in the production environment.

Now let's take a look at how the requirement above can be addressed.

To start addressing the requirement, the first step is to add required labels. Here you would need one label to group APIs that are used for ongoing development, and another to group production APIs.   

Grouping APIs with Labels

To group APIs with labels, you have to first add a meaningful label and then attach the label to the APIs you want to group together.

Adding labels

• Follow the steps below to add a label named dev:
  1. Sign in to WSO2 API Cloud.

  2. On the API Publisher, click Microgateways, and then click Manage Labels.

  3. Click Add Label and specify the following values:

     Field	Value
     Label	dev
     Description	APIs used for ongoing development

  4. Click Add Host and add two hosts as follows:
     
     • Host 1:   https://gw1.dev.mydomain.com:443
     • Host 2:   https://gw2.dev.mydomain.com:443
  5. Click Save.
     
     This creates a label with the specified details. 
     
     
     

• Follow steps 3 to 5 above to add another label with the following details:

  Field	Value
  Label	prod
  Description	Production APIs
  Gateway Host	https://gateway.mydomain.com:443

  This adds a label named prod, which you can use to group production APIs together.

  Based on the sample requirement, since all the APIs are supposed to be deployed in the test environment, you do not need to create a separate label to group APIs for the test environment.

Now that you have added all the labels required to address the sample scenario, you are ready to start attaching labels to APIs.

Attaching labels to APIs

You can attach a label to an API either during API creation or by editing an already created API.

Let's take a look at how to attach a created label to an API that you have already published. Here, we will use the PhoneVerification API that you have already published by following the /wiki/spaces/APICLOUDTEST/pages/43745288 tutorial.

1. Sign in to WSO2 API Cloud. This takes you to the API Publisher Web application.
2. In the API Publisher, browse to the PhoneVerification API and click EDIT API.
   
3. Navigate to the Manage tab.
   
4. Expand the API Gateways/Microgateways section and select a required label to attach it to the API.
   In this case, select the dev label.
   
5. Click Save & Publish. This adds the dev label to the PhoneVerification API.

Similarly you can add labels to appropriate APIs depending on your requirement.

Once you add the required labels to group APIs based on your requirement, you can configure a microgateway so that only APIs that have a particular label attached to it gets deployed via the microgateway.

Now that you understand how to add labels and attach labels to APIs, next let's take a look at how to configure a microgateway to deploy a set of APIs that have been grouped using labels.

Configuring a Microgateway to use a label

Follow the steps below to download a Microgateway instance and configure it to use a label:

1. Sign in to WSO2 API Cloud. 

2. On the API Publisher, click Microgateways, and then click DOWNLOAD MICROGATEWAY. This downloads a new Microgateway instance.

   Tip

   Let’s refer to the Microgateway download location as <MICROGATEWAY_HOME> throughout this section.

3. Open the <MICROGATEWAY_HOME>/repository/conf/on-premise-gateway.properties file and configure the property values depending on your requirement.
   The following code block from the on-premise-gateway.properties file depicts sample values provided to configure a Microgateway with the dev label.

   ##################################################
   
   # Configure the API gateway label below.  eg: [sample_label]
   api.hybrid.gateway.label=dev
   
   # Configure environment metadata properties below
   api.hybrid.meta.env.os.name
   api.hybrid.meta.env.user.name
   api.hybrid.meta.env.java.version
   
   # custom metadata properties
   api.hybrid.meta.custom.owner=john
   api.hybrid.meta.custom.project=Development
   
   ################################################

   Once you configure the property values appropriately, you are ready to initialize and run the Microgateway.

Running a Configured Microgateway to deploy grouped APIs

Follow the steps below to initialize and run the Microgateway that you configured.

1. Navigate to  <MICROGATEWAY_HOME>/bin via the command line and execute one of the following commands depending on your operating system:

   On Windows: cloud-init.bat --runOn Linux/Mac OS: ./cloud-init.sh

   This initializes the Microgateway.

2. Specify appropriate values for the following when prompted:

   • Organization key used in WSO2 API Cloud. This will be displayed in the on screen instructions when you download a Microgateway instance. 

   • Email address used to sign in to WSO2 API Cloud.

   • Password used to sign in to WSO2 API Cloud.

3. Run the Microgateway by executing one of the following commands depending on your operating system:

   On Windows: wso2server.bat --run 
   On Linux/Mac OS: sh wso2server.sh

   This starts the Microgateway and deploys APIs that are grouped with the dev label. The Microgateway that you started will be displayed in an online state as follows on the Microgateways page: