Developing APIs with Google Cloud’s Apigee API Platform

Overview

This course teaches developers how to design, build, secure, and manage APIs using Google Cloud's Apigee API Platform. Participants explore the full API lifecycle, from API design and documentation through to deployment, security, and analytics.

Learners begin by examining API design principles and how OpenAPI specifications can be used to document and standardise API definitions. The course then introduces the Apigee platform and demonstrates how APIs are implemented using API proxies and packaged as API products that can be consumed by application developers.

Through a combination of lectures, demonstrations, and practical labs, participants learn how to develop APIs, apply security policies, manage traffic, and publish APIs to developer portals. The course also explores monitoring and analytics capabilities that help organisations manage and optimise API usage across their platforms.

Prerequisites

Participants should have:

• Familiarity with HTTP, XML, JSON, and JavaScript

Target audience

This course is designed for:

• Developers responsible for building and implementing APIs
• Architects responsible for designing API solutions and API strategies
• Engineers responsible for managing APIs, API products, or digital products that rely on APIs

Objectives

By the end of this course, learners will be able to:

• Describe the fundamentals of REST API design and API-first development practices
• Explain the API lifecycle and how Apigee supports API management
• Describe Apigee terminology and organisational structures within the platform
• Design and implement APIs using API proxies
• Package APIs as API products for use by application developers
• Implement authentication and authorisation using OAuth and other security policies
• Apply platform capabilities for mediation, traffic management, caching, and fault handling
• Publish APIs through developer portals and manage API products
• Analyse API usage and performance using API analytics
• Deploy and interact with the Apigee API Platform

Outline

Apigee overview

• The role of API management in modern application development
• Logical components and organisational structure of the Apigee platform
• Apigee deployment models
• Understanding the API lifecycle
• Knowledge check

API-first design and OpenAPI specifications

• Fundamentals of REST API design
• Principles of API-first development
• Using OpenAPI specifications to document APIs
• Knowledge check

API proxies

• Building blocks of APIs and API proxies
• API proxy structure including flows, policies, and route rules
• Exposing APIs and connecting to backend systems
• Generating API proxies from OpenAPI specifications
• Running API proxies in multiple environments
• Troubleshooting proxies using the Apigee debug tool
• Labs and knowledge check

API products

• API product concepts and strategies
• Developers, applications, and API keys in API management
• API publication process
• API responses and REST status codes
• Publishing APIs as products
• Lab and knowledge check

Authentication, authorisation, and OAuth

• API security concepts and best practices
• Authentication and authorisation mechanisms
• OAuth components and their role in API design
• Federated identity and JSON Web Tokens
• Implementing OAuth policies in API proxies
• Lab and knowledge check

Content, transport, and internal security

• Protection against content-based attacks
• Transport security between Apigee and backend services
• Protecting sensitive data using key value maps, data masking, and private variables
• Preventing unauthorised internal access to sensitive information
• Debugging securely with masked data
• Labs and knowledge check

Mediation

• Mediation and fault handling capabilities in the Apigee platform
• Implementation patterns for JSON, XML, and SOAP services
• Extending APIs using Service Callouts, JavaScript, and Java
• Reusing and enforcing flows and policies across APIs
• Labs and knowledge check

Traffic management

• Traffic management concepts and strategies
• Rate limiting using spike arrest and quotas
• Caching strategies for API performance and scalability
• Labs and knowledge check

API publishing

• API publishing strategy and lifecycle considerations
• API versioning strategies
• The role of developer portals in API ecosystems
• Creating and configuring developer portals
• Lab and knowledge check

Logging and analytics

• Message logging options
• API analytics and usage insights
• Knowledge check

Advanced topics

• Offline development practices and CI/CD workflows for Apigee
• Apigee deployment options
• Knowledge check

Exams and assessments

There are no examinations or certifications associated with this course.

Hands-on learning

This course includes presentations, demonstrations, quizzes, and practical labs. Learners practise designing APIs, building API proxies, applying security policies, and publishing APIs while working with the Apigee API Platform in guided lab exercises.