Google Cloud Apigee X API Management - Hands-On Training

This is a short introduction to the course. It discusses the topics covered and also those not covered. Talks about the salient points of the course.

This is my introduction and background.

In this lecture the learners will know what an API is? They will also understand the importance of an API Management platform to the industry like Apigee X from Google cloud .

After this lecture, the students will know the significance of API's to survive and thrive in today's digital age. This lecture creates a background for the coming topics that are based on the age of digitalisation.

This lecture discusses a traditional way of monitoring in past for monolithic applications. It then explains Web API Management with Apigee X and shows the advantages to adopting Apigee monitoring over the cumbersome old way of traditional monitoring. The Web API management for modern APIs is far more efficient and cost-effective as it reduces the downtime of enterprise level APIs.

This is just a practice test to self - assess your progress in the course.

This lecture introduces Apigee API Management platform to the learners. After attending this lecture, they will understand the utility of Apigee X platform from Google Cloud.

This lecture discusses Apigee Hybrid model for big enterprises. This model is gaining popularity as there is less latency and more security since the runtime plane is set up by the customer and maintained in their own Kubernetes cluster. Therefore all API traffic and data are confined within the enterprise approved boundaries.

This lecture gives a short and quick overview of API proxy which is at the heart of Apigee Management. The lerners will be appreciate its needs for nearly everything related to Apigee.

In this lecture, I have discussed the entire configuration process as

1. Create a Google Cloud billing account

2. Create a Google Cloud Project (GCP)

3. Installing the Google Cloud SDK

4. Configure the API Management Platform

   
   

This text lecture discusses the backend target used for all exercises that returns a simple data and has no authentication or api key requirement.

Multiple Choice on Backend Target

After this lecture, the learners will be able to free up unused Google Cloud Projects that cost them credit. In this way, they can preserve their credit for longer.

To avoid surprises on your bill you can create  Cloud Billing budgets to monitor all of your Google Cloud charges in one place. A budget enables you to track your actual Google Cloud spend against your planned spend. After you've set a budget amount, you set budget alert threshold rules that are used to trigger email notifications.

This lecture is very important in as much as the learners will be able to create their own budget alert in order to have a stricter control on their actual spend of the available credit on their Google cloud account.

This text lecture shows the URL to use in the demos shown for Spike Arrest and Quota Policies of this section.

This lecture introduces policy in Apigee X platform and the reasons for its usage. Students will be able to understand and appreciate the significance of using policies to carry out so many administrative tasks without writing any code.

This lecture provides a brief overview of the four types of policies used in Apigee X: Traffic management, Security, Mediation and Extension

It describes the quota  policy in some details and includes  the most frequently used child elements and their parent-child hierarchy. After attending this lecture, the learners will understand the significance of adding a quota policy to the API proxy.

This is a lecture on how to verify a policy in Apigee X UI. The quota policy is verified with a hands-on experience which will enable the learners do the same at their end.

It describes the spike arrest policy in some details and includes all the common elements and the child elements

After attending this lecture the learners will be able to add a SpikeArrest policy to the API proxy that demonstates the policy.

An interesting self test quiz on Spike Arrest policy

It demonstrates a simple way to launch the built in "Hello World" api and thereby tests the Apigee end to end runtime

After attending this lecture, the learners will be able to create their first API proxy using the eval organisation of their Google Cloud Apigee X configuration.

After attending this lecture, the learners will be able to deploy their first API proxy in the eval organisation of their Google Cloud Apigee X configuration.

After attending this lecture, the learners will be able to test their API proxy created in the eval organisation of their Google Cloud Apigee X configuration.

After attending this lecture, the learners will be able to change the target endpoint of the API proxy created in the eval organisation of their Google Cloud Apigee X configuration. Changing the target endpoint will fetch some useful XML data.

After attending this lecture, the learners will be able to add an XML to JSON policy to  the API proxy created in the eval organisation of their Google Cloud Apigee X configuration. This policy transforms the response received to the JSON format for display.

It is a multiple-choice quiz to know where the learners are after completing this section

After attending this lecture, the students will know about the OpenAPI Specification.

In this lecture, a practical hands-on exercise is done to create and test an API proxy from an OpenAPI specification in Apigee. The students will be able to create an API proxy using the path to the raw content on GitHub for the OpenAPI specification.

The students will continue working on the API Proxy they created with OpenAPI specification in the previous lecture and add an XML to JSON policy to the View XML Response conditional flow which will transform the XML response to JSON format as tested by Postman or an application that has cURL (Windows Command Prompt)

This lecture introduces the topic of OAuth2 authentication for securing the APIs. Students will know what problem does OAuth solve and how in a nice request-response flow way?

A few multiple choices based on Insight to OAuth2

Discusses the mechanism of usage of OAuth2 with Apigee X

The different authorization grant types is being discussed and explained in this lecture. This will provide backup knowledge once the student knows the meaning and significance of authorization grants in the previous lecture.

This is the first step in securing an API with OAuth. The learners will download and deploy a sample API proxy from GitHub that will be further used in other steps (lectures) in this section. This download and deploy step is for convenience and to show how easy it is to share proxies that have already been created.

This is the second step in securing an API with OAuth. The students will understand the OAuth flow and policy that they have deployed with the sample API proxy in the previous tutorial.

In this case, the API proxy will call Apigee's mocktarget service to return your IP address. BUT, you'll get to see it only if you pass a valid OAuth access token with your API call.

This lecture discusses the policies created with OAuth protected API Proxy created in the previous lecture.

The students shall be able to add an API Product after completing this lecture

In this lecture we add a developer to the Apigee X UI as an initiation of a developer workflow. This developer will later be registered with an app.

An app is created and registered to the developer in this lecture.

Students will be able to get the key and secret (in an alphanumeric long string) to be later used to fetch the OAuth access token.

Calling the API Proxy to see the response if it returns the IP address which should fail. Here the failure demonstrates the security feature of OAuth 2.0 through a suitable policy that ensures non-access to the resource without the OAuth access token.

In this lecture we get an OAuth access token as response to a request by passing the client key and secret that we obtained in the last lecture.

This lecture shows how to use the OAuth Access token to get the desired response from the API. The API request sent the access token received earlier and the output response returns the IP address as expected.

In this exercise, a walkthrough of creating API Proxy with API key as common policy is shown for the learners to do it by themselves.

An API Product is added in this lecture through a walk-through exercise.

In this exercise, the learners will create a developer with the details. This developer will be used later.

This is an exercise which teaches the learners how to register an app on the Apigee portal.

In this exercise the learners will learn how to get the API key and use that API key to call the app with success. It completes securing the API with an API key.

It is best practice passing the key in the HTTP header rather than in a query parameter. This exercise teaches how to implement passing the key in the HTTP header.