Publishing an API without deploying it to any gateway (Advertised APIs)

[tmkasun]

Description

As of today all the APIs we developed are deployed to API gateway and handle QoS enforcement in the API gateway side. But sometimes we will need to create and manage APIs without really deploying them into the gateway and runtime part. This is the problem we need to solve with this feature.

Partially this feature has already been implemented to be used in the following scenarios,

• External Store use case
• Importing AWS APIs

Solution

• Define the scope of the feature (Differentiate the features advertise only API and external API support) #11710
• Prepare design document #11711
• Add add/enable advertise only API in the publisher UI #11712
• Add the capability to use advertise only APIs in API products #11713
• Expand the capability to import async API definitions (which are not available in APIM as supported streaming APIs) #11714
• Provide the capability to make resources/channels visible from the developer portal #11715
• Add API Controller related changes to support advertise Only APIs #12259
• Add UI and integration tests for Advertise Only APIs #11811
• Add documentation for Advertise Only APIs #11812

[tmkasun]

Had an offline chat with @sanjeewa-malalgoda @prasa7 @tgtshanika @malinthaprasan @bhathiya
We discussed to :

• Give the option to add a custom URL as the API endpoint when there are no deployment for the API (Advertised only API)
  • In the above Advertise API UI, Auto-populate the initial API URL from swagger (OAS Servers[0] or Swagger scheme+host+basepath). And user can provide any URL they want here
  • This URL will be saved in the Swagger and while return to the Developer portal when requested (API -> get Swagger)
• In the Developer portal
  • If there are no deployments (gateways) for the API, API endpoint/URL will be derived from the API definition
  • In case both deployments and can't derive URL from the API definition, The tryout button/option will be removed from the Swagger-UI, Because otherwise if we completely remove the Swagger-UI, Users will not be able to explore the resources properly
• Need to consider the newly added Importing APIs from AWS Gateway scenario

@nuwand can you please give your opinion on this?

[tmkasun]

related issues #10700