Quick Start

This guide gives a quick walk through the WSO2 API Manager product to get started fast. It introduces some of the basic features and the process from creating to testing a simple API. For a detailed description of how to install, set up and use the product's features and functionality, see each individual section of this documentation.

This guide covers the following:

Setting up the API Manager

Ensure that the following prerequisites are satisfied.
- JDK 1.6.* or higher installed.
- JAVA_HOME environment variable is set to <JDK_HOME>. For example, JAVA_HOME=c:/Program Files/java/jdk1.6.0_27.
Download the API Manager Binary distribution from http://dist.wso2.org/products/api-manager/1.4.0/wso2am-1.4.0.zip
Extract the zip file to a folder which will be referred to as the <APIM_HOME> throughout the rest of this guide.
Open a command prompt (or a shell in Linux) and go to <PRODUCT_HOME>/bin directory.
Start the API Manager server by executing wso2server.sh (or wso2server.bat in Windows).
The operation log keep running until the server starts, which usually takes several seconds. Wait until the server has fully booted up and displays a message similar to "WSO2 Carbon started in n seconds."

Browser Language

If the default language settings of your web browser is not English or Spanish you will come across an issue of getting 'null' as the lables in API Publisher and Store. To overcome this you can change the default browser language to English OR

Rename
APIM_HOME/repository/deployment/server/jaggeryapps/publisher/site/conf/locales/jaggery/locale_en.json ,

APIM_HOME/repository/deployment/server/jaggeryapps/store/site/conf/locales/jaggery/locale_en.json

two files, replacing 'en' with your language code.

ex: If the browser is running on Italy language, rename to locale_it.json.

By following either of above, the API Store and Publisher will display in English. If you want to change the language of the API Store and Publisher Web interface to your local language, see Internationalization and Localization.

Creating an API

Now that the API Manager is up and running, let's create a simple API using the API Publisher Web application.

Open a web browser and access the URL: https://localhost:9443/publisher.
You should see the API Publisher login screen. Type user/password as admin/admin and click Log in button.
The API Provider home page opens with all created APIs listed. Since first-time users haven’t created any APIs so far, they will not see any APIs. Click on the Add button to open the Add New API window.
As our first example, we are going to create an API named TestAPI, which is based on the YouTube functionality provided by http://youtube.com. Our API will accept both GET and POST requests and the output will be an Atom feed.

Enter following values into the respective fields of the Add New API form. In this example, we have not provided some fields which are optional.
- Name: TestAPI
- Context: /youtube
- Version: 1.0.0
- Visibility: Public
- Endpoint Security Scheme: Non Secured
- Production URL: http://youtube.com
- Tiers Availability : Gold, Silver, Bronze (select all 3 – this field supports multiple values)
Click Create at the end of the form to save the API configuration. You will be taken back to the API Provider home page where the new TestAPI will be listed.
By clicking the TestAPI, you can open its Overview tab, which lists a summary of the information entered when creating the API. The page also has other tabs.

Publishing the API

When you create a new API, it's initially in the CREATED state of its life cycle. When an API is in this state, the consumers cannot see it in the API Store. To enable consumers to view and subscribe to this created API, it should be promoted to the PUBLISHED state.

To publish the API, select the Life Cycle tab where you will see a drop down with different states the API can be in.
Select the PUBLISHED state in the drop down and click the Update button to apply the state change. The API Provider immediately displays the API state as PUBLISHED.

Subscribing to the API as a consumer

Now that the API is published, consumers should be able to see it and subscribe to it through the API Store.

To access the API Store, open a web browser and type the URL: https://localhost:9443/store. The TestAPI will be listed on the home page itself. Anonymous users also can access this API. To subscribe to an API, it is required to log in.
Log in to the API Store using the default admin/admin credentials and click on the TestAPI to go to the API overview page. There you should be able to see the Subscribe option.
To subscribe to an API, you should have an application in place. Select the DefaultApplication in the Applications drop down.
The Tiers drop down lists all the tiers specified when creating the API. Select the Gold tier and click on the Subscribe button.
Choose to proceed to the My Subscriptions page in the pop-up that appears.
The DefaultApplication will be displayed there along with its subscription to TestAPI.
Click the Generate button to obtain a key for your application.

Testing the API

Any REST client can be used to invoke the TestAPI. For Curl, use the following command to invoke it.

curl -v -H "Authorization: Bearer xxxxx" http://localhost:8280/youtube/1.0.0/most_popular

Replace the 'xxxx' with the application key obtained earlier. If the right key is passed, the API Manager will route the call to 'youtube.com' and get you the results. You can similarly access various other feeds in the YouTube API by changing the last segment of the invoked URL. For example, http://localhost:8280/youtube/1.0.0/top_rated, http://localhost:8280/youtube/1.0.0/most-shared etc.

You now have an introductory understanding of how to create and publish APIs through the API Publisher Web application, and how API consumers can use the API Store to subscribe to an API and invoke it. The proceeding chapters of this documentation provide detailed information on the API Manager, its components along with samples and tutorials.