Azure API Management, the developer portal

One of the cool features that come shipped with API Management is the developer portal.

This is essentially a website that is automatically created and works as an introduction to developers for the product that is shipped. It also allows the API owner to enforce security policies and show their terms of use. The layout can also be customised.

Customise the layout

Different options may be used to customise the website.

There are pages:

Media like pictures may be uploaded:

The page layout can easily be customised:

The navigation bar may as well be customised:

Different pieces of text may be easily changed:

Styles and HTML elements may be customised:

Documentation

The “API” tab leads to the documentation section where the different ways a developer can interact with the product are documented:

This, of course, includes code samples:

Authenticate Users

From the portal, administrators can handle:

• Subscription requests
• Request approvals
• Legal terms

Whenever I tried to hit the API now with Postman, I could it without any level of security involved.

Turning on the subscription checkbox, this would be what is returned:

The message is talking about the “Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key” that will be required to be passed as a header parameter.

To have one, I will need to sign in in the portal as a developer. Once done that, I will receive an email at my email address:

This is an example:

From inside the portal, I will need to make sure I have granted developers access to my product:

I will now be able to subscribe to the product as a developer and get my key.

If the product required approvals, that could be granted by navigating as an administrator in the Subscriptions section of Azure:

Conclusions

The Azure API Management Developer Portal is a great tool that would allow API publishers to quickly document their product and enforce access control on it.