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API calls represent nearly 83% of all web traffic, causing a sprawl of APIs across every business. The sheer scale of API adoption shifted the priorities of software engineering leaders from developing APIs to using and managing existing APIs. 

The web is littered with a lot of well-intentioned advice on API discovery and documentation to manage an enterprise wide central catalog of APIs. Beyond guidance, there are very few products in the market that actually help developers create a consolidated source of truth for their enterprise APIs. And of course, you can manage and protect APIs that you can access. 

MuleSoft’s new API Catalog CLI: Shifting emphasis to API discovery

As part of operating in a multi-cloud world ridden with diverse architectures, organizations are investing in four areas: 

  • Universal visibility by providing access to all APIs
  • High performant and versatile gateways to support modern architectures
  • Consistent security and governance while operating in diverse environments 
  • vibrant API ecosystems to maximize the value of API investments

Today, MuleSoft is introducing API Catalog CLI, specifically designed to help developers automatically discover API specifications built anywhere including their related metadata and documentation using their CI/CD pipelines. 

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1. Provide a centralized hub to host all enterprise APIs

At the bedrock of Anypoint Platform architecture is Anypoint Exchange. Anypoint Exchange provides a central marketplace for developers to jumpstart their development by browsing and consuming ready-to-use assets provided by MuleSoft ecosystem. Exchange also provides the ability for organizations to create a centralized repository/hub for all their APIs/assets/best practices. 

All assets

2. Make it easy for developers to catalog any API

MuleSoft recognizes the level of effort in manually uploading specifications to a central catalog. Manually taming API sprawl is a tedious and unrealistic approach which rarely scales with the size of the organization. 

Anypoint exchange

To address such challenges, MuleSoft is providing users with a way to automatically catalog any API – built in Anypoint Platform or elsewhere – in Anypoint Exchange using their existing development lifecycles with a CI/CD plugin. This plugin can be dropped into a CI/CD pipeline that extracts the relevant metadata, documentation and catalogs the API directly into Anypoint Exchange. This is a more scalable approach to catalog and manage any API. Anypoint Platform also provides a way to manually upload specifications or sync GitHub repositories to read specifications. With these capabilities, Anypoint Exchange can act as your single source of truth for all enterprise APIs

3. Standardize your APIs to get them ready for consumption

Cataloging all APIs into a consolidated source of truth is the fundamental pillar that can help you to universally control, manage, and secure all APIs. Once your APIs are in Anypoint Exchange, API product managers can create a frictionless onboarding and consumption experience for every API by creating standard metadata to ensure discoverability (e.g. tags, categories, etc.), clearly articulated value proposition, and top-notch reference documentation. 

Additionally, architects from security teams can ensure consistent quality and conformance to governance standards. Anypoint Exchange works seamlessly with Anypoint API Governance to flag APIs that do not conform to org-specific standards. These flags can in turn provide guidance to API product managers to filter APIs that are ready for internal and external consumption

api

Let’s see it in action 

At MuleSoft Transform 2021, we announced our vision for Universal API management on Anypoint Platform and how Anypoint API Governance advances our vision. At TrailblazerDX 2022, we outlined our new products (including the API Catalog CLI) that power Universal API management on Anypoint Platform. 

See the full list of products and capabilities that enablement Universal API Management on Anypoint Platform:

We’re excited to see these products in the hands of our community of developers, product managers, and architects. We look forward to how you will use them to enable your composable enterprise.

For more information, see the API Catalog CLI in action. We can’t wait for you to try the product and use it to avoid security and compliance issues while operating in hybrid/multi-cloud environments. Don’t forget to check out our developer tutorials to get started quickly with Universal API management on Anypoint Platform as well! 

If you missed MuleSoft Transform or TrailblazerDX, you can now watch the sessions on demand. Make sure to register for MuleSoft CONNECT to catch these products in action.