Publish your first API

This tutorial takes an API your team has built and gets it into the catalog, owned by your team, so consumers can discover it, read its specification and subscribe their applications to it.

Before you begin, you need:

• An API-dex account with the CI/CD role for the upload, and membership of a backend team for the ownership step. See Roles and types of users if you are not sure.
• The API's OpenAPI specification file.
• A backend team for the API. If it does not exist yet, create it first: see Managing your teams.

Publish the API

1

Sign in

Open your API-dex address and sign in with your organisation account. You land on the home page.

2

Select the environment

Open the environment control in the top bar and choose the environment your API is deployed to. The upload and the catalog entry are scoped to this environment. See Environments.

3

Open APIs

Open APIs from the main navigation to open the catalog for the selected environment.

4

Upload the specification

With a CI/CD account, drag your specification file onto the upload area on the APIs page, or select it to browse. From a pipeline, run apidex-cli upload-spec instead. API-dex validates the file and reports a readable error if the specification is not valid OpenAPI.

5

Assign it to your team

Open the new API, open the page menu beside the title and select Assign to backend team, then choose your team. Ownership is what tells consumers who to contact for changes and incidents.

6

Verify it is in the catalog

Return to APIs. Your API is listed for this environment, with its specification viewable and your team shown as owner.

Not yet released

Uploading from the browser through the four-step Upload spec page, including translation overlays, ships in a release after API-dex 3.1.0. See the Changelog.

INFO

Your API is now discoverable. Consumers open it from APIs, read the specification and add it to one of their applications. That flow is the next tutorial: Consume your first API.

What's next

• Exposing your API: the short version of these steps for the next time you publish.
• Managing your teams: add teammates to your backend team.
• Reference: API catalog: every control on an API's page, including version comparison.