Onboarding an API is a few clicks once Anypoint Platform is set up. The lasting work is policy design, contract approval flow, and monitoring discipline.
- Register the API in API Manager
Open API Manager, click Manage API. Choose the underlying implementation URL and link to the API specification in Anypoint Exchange.
- Apply policies
Add policies in the right order: Client ID Enforcement first, then Rate Limit-SLA, then any data-shape policies (JSON Schema Validation, JSON Threat Protection). Keep the bundle small enough to read on one screen.
- Define SLA tiers
Create tiers that match the consumer classes: Internal (auto-approve, high limit), Partner (manual approve, moderate limit), Public (manual approve, low limit).
- Approve consumer contracts
Process incoming contract requests from consumers. Approve, deny, or request more information. Approval issues a Client ID and Client Secret to the consumer application.
- Build dashboards and alerts
Use Anypoint Analytics to build per-API dashboards. Configure alerts on rate-limit violations, latency thresholds, and error rate spikes so operations teams hear about problems before consumers escalate.
- Policies execute in order. A poorly-ordered bundle can leak unauthenticated requests to back-end-validating policies and waste them.
- Auto-approving every consumer contract removes the governance value of contracts. Set the approval bar based on the consumer class.
- Latency adds up as policies stack. Test gateway latency before promising tight SLAs; ten policies add several milliseconds in practice.
- Versioning matters. Without parallel v1 and v2 deployments, every consumer breaks the day the API changes.