Hello everyone, hope you have been enjoying my posts so far. This one is going to be about an extension for API management service in Azure available in our favourite IDE- VS Code.

This extension has been there for some time but the recent release comes with few very powerful and user-friendly features. So in this post, instead of making it detailed, I am going to list out few very useful features of this extension and also paste a little gif for the same. Here we go,

Edit an API in Azure Resource Manager format

APIs are the foundation of an API Management service instance. Each API represents a set of operations available to developers. Each API contains a reference to the back-end service that implements the API, and it’s operations map to the operations implemented by the back-end service. Operations in API Management are highly configurable, with control over URL mapping, query and path parameters, request and response content, and operation response caching. Rate limit, quotas, and IP restriction policies can also be implemented at the API or individual operation level.

APIM extension allows you to edit your existing APIs right there in VS Code represented in a JSON format or what we usually call ARM format.

Edit Policies

Policies are a powerful capability of API Management that allows Azure to change the behavior of the API through configuration. Policies are a collection of statements that are executed sequentially on the request or response of an API. Popular statements include format conversion from XML to JSON and call rate limiting to restrict the number of incoming calls from a developer, and many other policies are available

I know you knew this but play along for the sake of it 😊. The extension allows you to edit all your policies right there in the same window without having you switch to the APIM instance in the Azure portal.

Test an API

This one is a no-brainer, but a cool one to have handy whenever you are working on a new API. It does save you a lot of time by not making you switch to other API testing apps like Postman.

Debug your Policies

This one in my opinion is the coolest one. I mean you get to see every little nook and cranny of a policy and debug it right then and there!

Switch and Release API versions

When your API is ready to go and starts to be used by developers, you eventually need to make changes to that API and at the same time not disrupt callers of your API. It’s also useful to let developers know about the changes you made. This is where you create Revisions of your API.

And who doesn’t like to play with different Revisions of an API before releasing it to the Customer? Well, I do. Here the extension provides the functionality to switch between available revisions of your API and also release the one which suits the requirement the most right there in VS Code.

Manage Subscriptions

This one is useful when you are trying to implement security for your APIs. Subscriptions can be applied on various scopes like Product, All APIs or an individual API. You can create subscriptions, assign scope and manage the owner for that subscription too.

That’s it, well not literally. There are so many other features this extension provides but let’s keep the post till here. Hope you found it helpful. You can read more about it here

• API Management
• Azure
• Extensions
• VS Code