layout: post title: "Re-Publishing Your API(s)" date: 2016-02-24 09:30:00 author: eric_wittmann tags: apiman 1.2.x gateway ---
Re-Publishing Your API(s)
An early design decision we made in apiman was to not allow APIs to be re-published to the Gateway. The reasoning was that Client Apps may have established Contracts with the API, and thus have agreed to specific terms and conditions (whether implicit or explicit). Therefore, we shouldn’t allow the API provider to modify those terms and re-publish the API, as it may violate the agreement.
However, we later added the concept of a Public API, which allows any client to invoke it without first creating a Contract. It is clear that API providers should be able to re-publish a Public API (presumably after changing the API’s configuration).
When Can I Re-Publish?
An API can be re-published to the Gateway when the following criteria is met:
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It is a Public API
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The API is in the Published state
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The API has been modified in some way
Additionally, if the Public API has been retired (is currently in the Retired state) then the user can Re-Publish it regardless of whether it has since been modified.
How Do I Re-Publish?
When an API meets the above criteria, a Re-Publish button will be available in the user interface (right where the "Publish" button is typically located).
As soon as you’re comfortable with the changes you’ve made to your API, simply click the button, and you should be all set!
Why Is There Still Versioning?
This feature does not take the place of API versioning. Versioning is still very important because you may want to publish multiple versions of the same API at the same time (for example, if you actually need to support multiple versions of a live API). In addition, if an API is not public, then you will still need to use versioning if you want to change the policy configuration for your API.
Conclusion
As always, a goal of apiman is to make the system as easy to use as possible, while still being useful and powerful. We think that this approach is a reasonable compromise. You still can’t re-publish an API if there are established Contracts with Client Apps, but if you’re only using Public APIs, then there’s no reason to prevent changes from being republished!
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