With IBM® WebSphere® Connect, you can connect your IBM WebSphere Application Server apps and data to the cloud in minutes without rewriting apps or acquiring new data. Designed specifically for your WebSphere Application Server environment, these capabilities give you the flexibility to respond to business changes at scale by using your apps and data wherever they are located, whether on-premises or on the cloud.
This tutorial teaches you how to deploy your on-premises IBM WebSphere Liberty V9 workloads onto the cloud, creating a highly available and sharable API environment. It also discusses in detail how to expose those APIs through IBM API Connect, available free on IBM Bluemix, allowing you to further manage and secure your API assets. You learn the end-to-end process, starting with pushing a WebSphere Liberty package into IBM Bluemix and setting up the API Connect service on IBM Bluemix.
This WebSphere API Connect example is based on this developerWorks article.
- Push a WebSphere Liberty API Discovery server into Bluemix
- Create an API Connect service in Bluemix
- Integrate WebSphere Liberty and API Connect: push and pull
-
First login to Cloud Foundry
cf login -a https://api.ng.bluemix.net
-
Then you can push your WebSphere Liberty server into the cloud straight from your current local file structure. However, depending on how large your logs and work area directories are, you might want to isolate your files in the following structure:
apps folderserver.xml fileIn the apps folder, place your enterprise archive (EAR) files or web archive (WAR) files. In the server.xml file, make sure that you have all the same configuration used in the on-premises environment, remembering to configure the API Discovery feature to expose your APIs.
For this example, we provided you an example web archive and server.xml file in the defaultServer folder.
Replace
<app_name>with an unique application name within your Bluemix region. This application name is the name of your API container.cf push <app_name> -p defaultServer
-
To reach the API Discovery user interface, go to
https://<app_name>.mybluemix.net/ibm/api/explorer. Then, use the credentials from your server.xml to login(For this example, the username isuserand the password isdemo).You should see something like this in your API Discovery user interface.
-
As shown in the following screen capture, you can click the Try it out button, which starts your application, running on the cloud.
-
To add API Connect as a Bluemix service, go to the bluemix API Connect service
-
Then, select the Essentials plan and click Create.
-
Go to dashboard by clicking here
-
By default, an empty catalog called Sandbox is created. To enable its corresponding developer portal, click Sandbox then Settings.
-
Click Portal, and then under Portal Configuration, select IBM Developer Portal. A Portal URL is automatically inserted.
-
Take note of the Portal URL, which reveals the target server address and organization that you need later. The URL is broken down into the following three parts, as shown in the following screen capture:
- 1 is the catalog's short name, in this case, sb.
- 2 is your organization ID, in the example, arthurdmcaibmcom-dev.
- 3 is the target address of your API Connect instance, for example, https://us.apiconnect.ibmcloud.com.
-
Click Save at the top right corner. You see the following message:
Creating the developer portal for catalog 'Sandbox' may take a few minutes. You will receive an email when the portal is available. -
After you received the email, go to the Portal URL and you will see something like this.
This is where enterprise developers go to find the products (for example, an API or a group of APIs) that are exposed in the API catalog. Developers also can interact with each other through the Blogs and Forums links.
Choose either push or pull WebSphere Liberty APIs from API Connect. Also, push won't work on IBMer's account due to federated reasons.
-
Go to
https://<app_name>.mybluemix.net/ibm/api/explorer/ -
Click POST for the apiconnect endpoint
-
Fill in the parameters as shown in the following screen capture, your organization ID should be the second part of your Portal URL.
-
You want to publish this API product, not just stage it, so leave the stageOnly parameter as false. The X-APIM-Authorization parameter represents the credentials that Liberty uses to log into API Connect. The description on the right side provides details on the accepted format. The following example uses: apimanager/arthurdm@ca.ibm.com:myPassword.
-
The best part about using the Swagger user interface in Liberty to push your APIs into API Connect is that you can use a fully working product.json sample JSON file. Click the sample JSON file under Model Schema, and that JSON file is automatically transferred into the body input box, as shown in the following screen capture:
-
Now you're ready to publish these APIs. Click Try it out!
-
In less than a minute, you should see the operation return successfully (code 200), with the response content, code and headers displayed, as shown in the following screen capture:
Congratulation. You API is published. Now explore the API Connect Developer Portal like consumers of your API do. Go to your Portal URL and click API Products.
Now you can go to your API and try it out at the API Connect Developer Portal.
-
From the main API Connect dashboard in Bluemix, click the menu icon and select Drafts. Click APIs, click Add, and select Import API from a file or URL.
-
In the Import API from a file or URL window, click Or import from URL.
For the URL, type the Liberty URL that you want to use to import the Swagger document. For this example, you can use
https://<app_name>.mybluemix.net/ibm/api/docs/apiconnect -
Click All APIs to go back into the main Drafts page, Click Products, and then click Add > New Product. In the Add a new product window, type in a title (could be anything) and then click Add.
-
The design view opens for the Product. Scroll down to the APIs section and click on the + icon.
-
Select the API you just imported, and click Apply.
-
In the Plans section, you can create different plans with different rate limits, to control which methods from each API are exposed. For this example, please use the default plan.
Click the save icon to save your changes.
-
Now you are ready to stage your Product into a catalog. Click the cloud icon and select the catalog where you want to stage the APIs.
-
To go back into the catalog, click the menu icon , and select Dashboard. Then click the menu icon for your staged product and select Publish.
-
In the new window that opens, you can edit who can view your APIs and who can subscribe to your API Plans. For this example, use the defaults and click Publish.
Congratulation. You API is published. Now explore the API Connect Developer Portal like consumers of your API do. Go to your Portal URL and click API Products.
Now you can go to your API and try it out at the API Connect Developer Portal.
Go back to the initial dashboard by clicking the IBM Bluemix icon at the top left corner of the page, and click All Items. Scroll down to the Cloud Foundry Applications section and locate the application you want to delete. Click the menu icon, and then select Delete App.
Carefully read the window that describes the routes that are about to be deleted with the application, and then click Delete.
Now remove the API Connect service. Scroll down to Services, and locate the API Connect service to delete. Click the menu icon and then select Delete Service.
A confirmation window opens, describing that all data (APIs, Products, and subscriptions) stored in that API Connect service are to be removed. Click Delete.