May 30 2014
API-Axle: Tips, Tricks and Gotchas
This is a brief post to help beginners with API-Axle. What is API-Axle? As described on their site:
ApiAxle is a proxy that sits on your network, in front of your API(s) and manages things that you shouldn’t have to, like rate limiting, authentication and analytics. It’s fast, open and easy to configure.
Here are some tips to help out with the initial instructions at: http://apiaxle.com/docs/try-it-now/ .
Note: myapi in myapi.api.localhost should be replaced by your own api name.
Increase Timeout
The initial timeout (2 seconds) can result in errors because your backend API server takes time to reply to api-axle. In order to increase this you can use the endPointTimeout parameter.
Example (10 seconds):
axle> api "myapi" create endPoint="stream.site.org:80" endPointTimeout=10 axle> key "1234" create axle> api myapi linkkey "1234"
Edit Local Hosts File
Api-Axle uses the host in the request URL to determine which API is requested. This is exactly the same way that vhosts work in apache.
Therefore, an easy way to do an initial test is to add the following to your local machine host file:
IPAddressOfAPIAXLE myapi.api.localhost
Once you edit your hosts, your API will be available with the URLs:
http://myapi.api.localhost:3000/webserviceHere?api_key=1234
Install apiaxle-api
In order to be able to run analytics and also use the full API, as defined at http://apiaxle.com/api.html , it is required to additionally install apiaxle-api (which is not included with basic apiaxle).
Installation:
$ sudo npm install apiaxle-api $ apiaxle-api
Execution:
$ nohup apiaxle-api -p 3001 $ curl "http://127.0.0.1:3001/v1/api/myapi/keycharts?granularity=day"
Configure NGinx
It is recommended to run as many apiaxle as there are cores on different ports and use nginx to specify a cluster. Nginx then recieves requests on a default port (e.g. 80), and redirects requests to apiaxle instances while also changing the host in the request to fit “myapi.api.localhost”.
