Updating your API Gateway Operations

Version 35.4 by Danniar Firdausy on 2024/09/05 10:23

In our crash course on the API Gateway pattern, we have learned about setting up the API Gateway. However, we still need to delve into how to update your existing API Gateway solution. In this microlearning, we will focus on updating the design phase of your API gateway (and the subsequent steps) and the create phase of your API gateway (and subsequent steps). This is to learn the impact of updates and how we can achieve this.

Should you have any questions, please contact academy@emagiz.com.

1. Prerequisites

  • Basic knowledge of the eMagiz platform

2. Key concepts

This microlearning centers around updating your API Gateway.

By updating, we mean changing existing software to reflect new insights or ideas that have come up during development and testing.

  • Updating can happen from Design
  • Updating can happen from Create
  • Both situations have a different impact

3. Updating your API Gateway Operations

In our crash course on the API Gateway pattern, we have learned about setting up the API Gateway. However, we still need to delve into how to update your existing API Gateway solution. In this microlearning, we will focus on updating the design phase of your API gateway (and the subsequent steps) and the create phase of your API gateway (and subsequent steps). This is to learn the impact of updates and how we can achieve this.

  • Updating can happen from Design
  • Updating can happen from Create
  • Both situations have a different impact

In the remainder of this microlearning, we will discuss both scenarios to clarify their impact.

3.1 Updating from Design

After adding an integration to Create, you can change the error handling, the request and response message structure, the parameters, and more. In all these scenarios, you need to change something in the Design phase of eMagiz. The actual change in these parts of the API Gateway solutions is specified in earlier microlearnings. However, what to do after you have made those changes has yet to be discussed. In this microlearning, we will discuss that process within eMagiz. Note that this process only applies when the operation already exists in Create. If it does not yet exist in Create, eMagiz will create a new entry and exit gate for you based on the configuration in Design.

From our offering on the messaging pattern and how to update it in those scenarios, you can imagine that (parts of) the API Gateway flows need to be updated to reflect your changes. Depending on the exact change, the effect will be seen in the corresponding entry gate or the corresponding exit gate specific to an operation. The division can be made as follows:

  • When you change something in the configuration of the API Gateway operation itself (e.g., path, error handling, parameters), the change will only impact the corresponding entry gate.
  • When you change something in the configuration of the backend operation (i.e., endpoint, parameter, system request/response), the change will only impact the specific exit gate.
  • When you change the gateway request/response message (with transformation), the change will impact both the entry gate and the specific exit gate.
  • When you change the API Gateway's security configuration, the infra flow and all entry gates will be updated (by clicking on Update security in the context menu).

eMagiz will automate all changes on the entry gate level except for changing the security configuration due to the impact of such a change. When the change is executed, eMagiz will automatically create a new version of the entry gate to reflect the change. To update changes in the exit gate, you need to execute a manual version bump. This division is made because the exit gate can contain much more customization, while the entry gate is, in most cases, completely generated by eMagiz.

3.2 Updating from Create

Apart from updating your API Gateway solution in Create, you can only update parts of the API Gateway solution in Create. Here, we mainly talk about changing the gateway messages. Any other changes on the 'exit gate' level have no particular impact compared to changing parts of other flows. We discern two parts of updating a (gateway) message that you can execute in the Create phase:

  • Changing the dataType (i.e., from dateTime to date)
  • Changing / Adding / Deleting valid enum values

In both cases, eMagiz will automatically update your Swagger definition by recreating it to reflect these changes and executing a version bump of the infra flow.

3.3 Updating the Swagger UI

As is the case with all new versions in Create, the changes will only be effective when you deploy your solution via the eMagiz Deploy phase. 

Information

To ensure that the changes to your Swagger file generated by eMagiz are shown to the end-user, the latest version of the API Gateway runtime infra flow needs to be included in the release and deployed to the correct environment.

4. Key takeaways

  • Updating can happen from Design
  • Updating can happen from Create
  • Both situations have a different impact
  • Adding a new operation to an existing solution does not involve a reset
  • Updating from Create does not involve a reset
  • Updating from Design does not involve a reset

5. Suggested Additional Readings

If you are interested in this topic and want more information, please read the help text provided by eMagiz and the following link.