REST APIs using RAML and API-Kit on MuleESB 3.6? - api

I would like to know if deploying APIs designed using RAML and API-kit in the studio on Mule Enterprise Server for ESB ver. 3.6 is a good idea?
Our organization is interested in using Mule ESB 3.6 for integrations and we thought of recommending using RAML and API-kit for REST API design and development. We are not interested in any Gateway features but would like to leverage RAML for API definition.
Has anyone experienced any issues if we go for a Mule ESB 3.6 Enterprise and deploy these REST APIs designed using API-Kit and RAML there? Is this design approach specifically meant for the API Gateway which is part of the Mule Any-point API Product offering?

API Gateway (AGW) is a superset of Mule EE. RAML and APIKit are not tightly coupled to API Gateway or Mule ESB but can work in either of them. In the case of AGW, APIKit comes bundled with it, while with Mule ESB you have to provide the jar yourself or develop your APIKit project on Mule Studio (using the APIKit Mule Studio plugin) and export the project from Mule Studio when ready.
The advantage of using AGW is that you can develop your APIKit project as usual, and then be able to apply-unapply high end policies to it at runtime (OAuth security, XML Threat protection, IP Blacklisting, etc, etc).

I have used this REST API using RAML for my client. They didn't face any issues and it's working perfectly. And it's easy to implement.

I see no problem in doing what you are suggesting. Gateway and such are services build on top of Mule and RAML technologies -- if you choose not to use them you'll just lose the features they offer but again RAML, Mule, and APIkit work just fine on their own!

In latest version of mule brought many features like api auto discovery and there is no separate gateway and runtime they have been combined together as a single component.
Api auto discovery allows us to apply policies on top of original implementation api.
you can create proxy for the original implementation and policies can be applied on the proxy layer which is in gateway.

Related

API gateway vs Mule server

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Do they each have a specific purpose? Is one better suited than the other for a particular task?
They are two different distributions and serve different purposes.
API Gateway- It has specific features to communicate to Anypoint Platform to manage APIs, apply runtime policies, send analytics, track APIs.
Task- For deploying your proxy API Application
Mule Server- Mule server is the runtime you use for your integrations.
Task- For deploying your actual implementation API Application
Since Mule runtime version v3.8.0, both are one and the same. This means that since that version, the runtime is shipped with API Gateway capabilities, and there is no more API Gateway specific distributions released. To enable API Gateway capabilities, if you have the correct entitlement, you only need to specify your organization credentials or environment credentials (this last, it is only applicable to Mule 4 or newer).
API Gateway capabilities are the only ones who "know" how to apply/un-apply Anypoint Policies and generate Analytics info, among other things.
For runtimes released before v3.8.0, the only way to leverage those capabilities was to use API Gateway distribution. For example, API Gateway v2.x is based on Mule runtime v3.7.x.

Wso2 API orchestration requirement for API Management

We successfully launch Wso2 API management solution. One of the main functionality of our project is to orchestrate several simple API and make one Meta API. Then we want to publish this Meta API into Wso2 API Management Publisher and make it available to use.
Is any solution to this requirement?
You can do this. If I understand you correct, you only want to publish the meta api as a managed api. Other simple apis won't be published. If so, things are pretty easy.
WSO2 API Manager uses Apache Synapse as the mediation engine (which is used by WSO2 ESB too). This allows to do the chaining. Please go through the following articles.
http://wso2.com/library/articles/2014/03/batch-api-api-chaining-scenario/
https://docs.wso2.com/display/ESB470/Service+Chaining+Example
http://wso2.com/library/articles/2012/09/get-cup-coffee-wso2-way/

Mule API - deploy to a Mule Runtime

I am experimenting with Mule API management these days. What I come to know is we can deploy our API to one of these:
A Mule Runtime
An API Gateway
In the documentation, it is said that we should go with option 1 when we want to separate out the implementation of your API from the orchestration. What does it mean?
Can any one please explain in detail?
Policy management from API Platform and analytics generation can be achieved only by using a correctly configured API Gateway, which is a superset of Mule EE (current version is API Gateway 2.1.0 which contains Mule EE 3.7.2).
Depending on your architecture you may have different solutions.
For example:
Proxy running on API Gateway, implementation API running somewhere
else (eg. Mule EE/CE, Tomcat, cobol server, etc)
Proxy and implementation API running on the same API Gateway
Implementation API
managed directly from API Platform without using the autogenerated
proxies.
HTH :-)
Not exactly sure what they mean there, because on this page: https://developer.mulesoft.com/docs/display/current/API+Gateway they also mention this:
Note that the API Gateway, because it acts as an orchestration layer
for services and APIs implemented elsewhere, is technology-agnostic.
You can proxy non-Mule services or APIs of any kind, as long as they
expose HTTP/HTTPS, VM, Jetty, or APIkit Router endpoints. You can also
proxy APIs that you design and build with API Designer and APIkit to
the API Gateway to separate the orchestration from the implementation
of those APIs.
So both methods technically allow you to separate API from orchestration, as your API gateway application could simply proxy another Mule application elsewhere that performs the orchestration. But my understanding of the two options are:
The API gateway is a limited offering that allows you to use a subset of Mule's connectors, transports and modules such as ApiKit and HTTP, it allows you to expose and API then use http to connect to whatever backend systems you want as a proxy and perform the orchestration in the API layer.
By using the Mule runtime operation, it gives you much more flexibility and allows you to compose as many applications as you want using the full range of connectors etc. and separate out the different aspects of your applications into as many layers as you want as separately deployable entities that you can deploy to on-premise standalone instances or Cloudhub etc.
#Ryan answer is more or less on the mark, however if you do choose the Mule ESB offering you will loose out on the API Management and governance functionality that API gateway provides OOTB.
These include
Lets you enforce runtime policies and collect data for analytics
Applies policies to APIs or endpoints around security, throttling,
rate limiting, and more
Extends PingFederate to serve as identity management and OAuth
provider for your APIs
Lets you require or restrict certain behaviors in a few simple steps
Lets you add or remove policies at runtime with no API downtime
Manages access to your API by issuing contract keys
Monitors the API to confirm it is meeting all contract terms
Ensures compliance with service level agreements (SLAs)
In my opinion go with API Gateway/Manager if your API will be consumed my third party developers with whom you might not have too many interactions (think public API's) else Mule ESB should be good.
You should be able to migrate from Mule ESB to API Manager (and vice versa) also easily if you need to, so I do not think you will get locked into your decision
PS: Content copied from here

Mule:How to connect Mule ESB with Hybris?

I have a requirement to connect Mule ESB with Hybris. I didnt find Hybris connector provided by Mule( Also didnt find sample examples as well). This is the 1st time going to try Mule with Hybris..Please let me know the steps or efficient procedural way to connect Hybris.
Is the hybris URL enough to connect?. Please suggest me with your thoughts to implement. Thanks in advance.
Hybris has many ways to integrate with their platform. If you have a login you can access their docs which details examples of integration with the platform including JMS and the Platform Web Services.
There is no connector supplied by Mule, but you can access their Platform Web Services which are implemented with a HTTP Restful API using the Mule http transport or by building your own connector using the Mule DevKit.
The hybris wiki has pages dedicated to most of the endpoints and the request/response formats. You can view this here if you have a login: https://wiki.hybris.com/display/release5/WebService+API+-+Reference
Also, in your hybris installation there are a bunch of examples in /bin/ext-platform-optional/platformwebservices/src...
and /bin/ext-platform-optional/platformwebservices/testsrc which show the actual web service implementations and their test cases using Jersey client.

WSO2 API Manager - can it convert REST requests to SOAP requests on the backend?

I'm exploring the use of the WSO2 API Manager for our legacy API, which is currently SOAP based. IDeally, I'd like to expose a RESTful interface to our customers and have API Manager convert that to a SOAP request that gets passed to our legacy system. Searching the WSO2 site, I see there's some way to do this using XSLT transformations, but only when using the WSo2 ESB product.
Is there a way to handle this transformation in the API Manager? How? If not, could I somehow take advantage of the ESB product and combine it with the API Manager product? Or is that overkill?
Thanks!
REST to SOAP conversion is a standout feature of the WSO2 ESB. To learn more about it look at the sample given at [1]. The Payload Factory Mediator used in this sample is a much newer type of mediator than the XSLT Mediator and is also more efficient in handling SOAP messages than XSLT Mediator.
The WSO2 API Manager is a platform for publishing, managing and governing APIs. The WSO2 API Manager is built using the componentalized Carbon framework, for which almost all components of the WSO2 ESB are utilized. Therefore technically all that can be done with the WSO2 ESB can be done by the WSO2 API Manager; however without the help of the GUI found in the WSO2 ESB; you will have to use the source view of the configuration which is xml based. But ofcourse to navigate around this obstacle you can always download the WSO2 ESB product (which is also free and open-source) and create all the necessary mediation sequences using the GUI and copy-n-paste the configuration from the WSO2 ESB to the WSO2 API Manager and you are done.
In my opinion it is the WSO2 ESB that you need. In your case I presume you just have one or a few SOAP APIs which you need to expose as REST APIs; you are looking more at the REST-SOAP conversion feature rather than the ability to manage hundreds of APIs. If you do not need the core functionalities of the API Manager such as publishing APIs, versioning, authenticating consumers, throttling based on policies, and monitoring API usage (for a complete list of features look at the product homepage at [2]), then you really do not want the API Manager. But if you have the API Management requirements you can go with WSO2 API Manager. I don't think you should go with the WSO2 API Manager just because you foresee some kind of API Management requirements coming ahead.
Using both the WSO2 ESB fronted by the WSO2 API Manager is also a solution. WSO2 even recommends this architecture if you are performing heavy mediation in the mediation layer. You can even start with the WSO2 ESB alone and later when the proper requirements come, decide to front it with the WSO2 API Manager. Fronting the WSO2 ESB with the WSO2 API Manager is a breeze.
[1] http://docs.wso2.org/wiki/display/ESB403/Sample+800+Introduction+to+REST+API
[2] http://wso2.com/products/api-manager/