# Creating Azure API Management Service Instance and Importing Backend APIs ### Prerequisites - Azure Subscription ### Introduction: Azure API Management In this digital era, businesses everywhere are looking into a way of extending their operations as a digital platform, creating new channels, integrating with multiple platforms and achieve a developer friendly ecosystem. API Management (APIM) provides a robust method to ensure a successful API program through developer engagement, business insights, analytics, security and protection. Azure API Management service helps developers and organisations a robust means to publish their APIs to external world (partners, customers/end-users) with ease and speed. The below figure (Figure.1) depicts a pictorial view of a developer who subscribed to APIM product, accessing the product’s associated API (APIs are hosted by internal backend service) via APIM Service using API gateway endpoint. ![APIM_v1.JPG](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624241366570/phkIG8nOC.jpeg) **Figure.1: Azure API Management Service Overview** ### Create an Azure API Management (APIM) instance using Azure portal To create an APIM service, login to [https://portal.azure.com](Link) Step 1. Once signed-in, search for APIM service as showed below ![1.JPG](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624245327406/RAIHKv9Pl.jpeg) Step 2. In APIM service page, click on the “Create” option ![2.JPG](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624241764611/j313WlJj0.jpeg) Step3. In create section, enter all the required fields to create a new APIM service - **Resource Group**: Select existing or a create new resource group - **Region**: Azure region in which the APIM service will be spawned - **Resource Name**: API Management instance name - **Organization Name**: To use in developer portal and sending email notifications - **Administrator email**: To receive all system notifications from APIM ![3.jpg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624245494643/sVByi7cb6.jpeg) ![4.jpg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624245505622/vZ_AhBaeV.jpeg) In this article, the pricing tier is selected as “Developer”. **The Developer tier of API Management does not include SLA and should not be used for production purposes. Your service may experience intermittent outages, for example during upgrades.** > Note: Apart from Basics section, all other sections (Monitoring, Scale, Managed Identity, Virtual Network, Protocol Settings, Tags) are left to default values in this article Step4. Click on **Review + Create** and once the validation passed, click on **Create** button to proceed for APIM service creation ![5.jpg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624246119755/3xYql7om1.jpeg) Step5. Once the creation of APIM service is successful, navigate to the newly created APIM service ![6.jpg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624245583538/m9W5sprvN.jpeg) ### Import and publish backend APIs Step6. Navigate to the newly created service **labs-demo** and click on **API ** option from the left blade ![7.jpg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624242963747/f588HDjOb.jpeg) Step7. To import APIs, click on **Add API** and select **OpenAPI** under **Create from definition ** ![8.jpg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624245613625/AW_-8-xYO.jpeg) Step8. In OpenAPI specification, enter details as follows - **OpenAPI Specification**: In this article, Microsoft provided backend APIs sample is used ([https://conferenceapi.azurewebsites.net?format=json](Link)). The API specification can be added as an endpoint URL or uploaded as a file - Enter Display name, Name, description - **URL scheme**: Select HTTP or HTTPS or Both. *For production, HTTPS is recommended* - **API URL Prefix**: A suffix appended to the base URL of the API Management service. The suffix must be unique for every API for a given publisher - **Tags**: Organising APIs for grouping, searching and filtering - **Products**: To associate APIs to a product. By default, APIM instance comes with two products. Here, a default product **Starter** is used to associate the APIs to publish - **Gateway**: To expose the API. This field is available only in Developer and Premium tier services - **Version**: To version the APIs ![9.jpg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624243956629/BvLbKPTY7.jpeg) ![10.jpg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624243914031/1rEp9Fsn5.jpeg) ![11.jpg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624243863968/ODBYerZGa.jpeg) Step9. Once created, the endpoints can be viewed under **API** section in the name **Demo Conference API** ![12.jpg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624244117193/Ee1Avsa6x.jpeg) Step10. Now, test the APIs from APIM by navigating to **Test** tab, Step 10.1. Select the API to test (Here, **GetSpeaker** endpoint is taken for testing) Step 10.2. Input the required input parameters (**Speaker ID**) Step 10.3. Click **Send** and observe the response from the backend API (**200 OK**) ![13.jpg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624244776487/M94caom2L.jpeg) > Note: To publish the API to API consumers, this must be associate with a product and while sending the request to API, subscription key (Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key) needs to be passed in the header. The need to send Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key as a header for each request can be enabled/disabled at the **Settings** tab ![14.jpg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624244928411/ana7Iwqk3.jpeg) Accessing the backend APIs using API gateway endpoint using POSTMAN tool. > Note: The API gateway URL can be obtained from the overview section of APIM service instance - Endpoint: https://labs-apim.azure-api.net/speaker/10 - Base URL: https://labs-apim.azure-api.net - Path Context to specific endpoint: /speaker/{id} ![15.jpg](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1624245081114/TcqYIAd6n.jpeg) ### References - [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/api-management/api-management-key-concepts](Link) - [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/api-management/get-started-create-service-instance](Link) - [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/api-management/import-and-publish](Link)