As enterprises continue to scale their API ecosystems, they face growing API sprawl. Many now have a fragmented landscape of APIs, scattered across heterogenous environments. Without a centralized API catalog, teams struggle with:

• Duplicate APIs that waste development resources
• Shadow APIs introducing security risks
• Limited API reuse, leading to inefficiencies
• Unclear governance and lifecycle tracking

A well-structured API catalog solves these challenges by providing a single source of truth for all APIs. It enhances API discoverability, improves governance, and maximizes reuse. This enables teams to focus on building value-driven applications, instead of spending time hunting for existing APIs, or worse, unknowingly building duplicates.

This post looks at how to catalog APIs effectively, specifically using our ignite platform to build a holistic and active API catalog in 3 simple steps.

Growing API sprawl means a good catalog is more important than ever

API sprawl is a growing challenge for enterprises, as APIs are now scattered across many platforms, making them difficult to track and manage. This includes:

1. Multiple Code Repositories: including multiple GitLab, GitHub, or Bitbucket repos, often with teams each having their own project to store API code.
2. API Gateways: APIs are then deployed across multiple gateways such as Apigee, Microsoft Azure API Gateway, and Oracle OIC API gateway, in an attempt to optimize runtime costs.
3. API/Developer Portals: Internal and external APIs are listed and exposed to different developer groups for consumption, often with different details attached and differing consumption experiences.
4. Integration Platforms: APIs also exist within iPaaS tools like Mulesoft, Oracle OIC, or Boomi.

It’s no wonder then that improper API inventory management features on the OWASP Top 10 API Security risks list. Without proper cataloging, enterprises are increasingly struggling to provide visibility into which APIs exist, who owns them, and any that are duplicates, redundant, and/or not properly secured. Ensuring API quality and promoting API reuse also becomes costly and time consuming.

API Cataloging Options: What’s Right for You?

Organizations now have multiple tooling options when deciding how to build an API catalog, each with their own pros and cons.

A dedicated solution like digitalML’s ignite Holistic Catalog offers a dedicated independent and governance-driven API catalog, so you can focus on maximizing API value rather than building and maintaining a catalog or open source solution from scratch.

How to catalog APIs in ignite in 3 simple steps

Unlike other solutions which can take months to build and configure, ignite’s Holistic Catalog makes it quick and easy to bring ALL APIs from any platform or lifecycle state into one central repository, quickly sync with other platforms to keep the catalog up to date, and provide data-driven insights to jump start API reuse and efficiency opportunities.

Step 1: Populate and Synchronize from your code repositories

To build and maintain an up-to-date inventory of all available APIs, you first want to ingest and sync APIs from your existing repos.

• Establish the connections between ignite and GitHub or GitLab. You can do this in self-service way using ignite’s UI wizards
• Next, use ignite’s Bulk Import feature to bring in APIs from each team’s project in one click. These automatically import into ignite’s Design and Specification artifacts, including additional artifacts from the repo like metadata and attachments.
• Finally, set up your repo sync to keep everything automatically maintained – ignite supports this either via harvesting updates from the repo, or via a push update when new version and updates are deployed to CI/CD pipelines.

Step 2: Connect to your API gateways for runtime insights

The next goal is to bridge the gap between static API documentation and live runtime data for better governance and decision making.

• Connect to your existing API gateways including Apigee, AWS API Gateway, Microsoft Azure API Gateway, and Oracle OCI API Gateway which can be self-serviced in ignite, or by working with our customer success team if you’re using any other gateways
• Match what’s in the gateway to what’s in ignite using our runtime reconciliation report
• Runtime data on usage, performance and security will auto-populate in the catalog

Step 3: Report, Prioritize, and Optimize

Now it’s time to turn your API catalog into a living hub that’s constantly improving API quality and reuse, security, and efficiency.

• Promote high-quality APIs to a developer portal for reuse
• Identify and curate APIs to meet gold-standard governance policies
• Remediate security risks by flagging vulnerable APIs
• Identify and deprecate redundant APIs to streamline your ecosystem
• Identify and consolidate duplicate APIs to prevent inefficiency

Additional best practices for cataloging APIs

The following best practices can add further value to your API catalog:

1. Defining a Standardized Documentation Format

Utilize specifications like OpenAPI or Async API to establish consistent documentation standards and ensure uniformity across all APIs.

2. Organizing APIs by Categories

Group APIs based on functionality, business units, or other relevant criteria to enhance discoverability. This can be via classification against business or industry taxonomies and/or tags in the specification.

3. Implementing Version Control

Maintain clear versioning to track API evolution and ensure compatibility, preventing breaking changes and bad consumer experiences.

4. Ensuring Security and Compliance

Incorporate security protocols and compliance checks within the cataloging process and across the API lifecycle to protect sensitive data.

5. Promoting API Discoverability and Reusability

Promote gold standard APIs to consumer portal(s) to foster reuse as the first point of call and reduce duplication.

Conclusion

Cataloging APIs effectively is no longer optional. It’s now a necessity for organizations managing large scale API ecosystem. A well-structured API catalog enables:

• Increased efficiency by reducing redundant API development
• Enhanced security and compliance with clear governance policies
• Faster innovation by improving API discoverability and reuse

Instead of spending time building and maintaining an API catalog, use a dedicated solution like ignite to quickly populate and sync your API inventory, allowing your teams to focus on maximizing API value.

🚀 Start cataloging your APIs today and unlock the full potential of your API ecosystem!