Developer Portal Quick Starter Guide

cesar created · Mar 27, 2015 at 04:52 PM · 8.3k Views · Dom Couldwell edited · Aug 10, 2016 at 03:48 PM

Here's a high level strategy I recommend on releasing the Developer Portal quickly with minimal effort.

Quick Starter Strategy

1) Leverage as much out of the box functionality as possible. Avoid creating custom modules or a custom theme which requires coding.

2) Customize the appearance and theme using the built in Drupal UI:

http://apigee.com/docs/developer-services/content/customize-appearance

3) Configure your App registration process:

http://apigee.com/docs/developer-services/content/configuring-api-products

4) Leverage Drupal CMS UI to create and customize, and layout the content:

http://apigee.com/docs/developer-services/content/add-and-edit-content

5) The preferred API documentation solution is to leverage SmartDocs. This requires creating a Swagger or WADL file. If time doesn't permit, the fall back option to manually create content (see step 4).

6) Redirect live site to your production domain: For example, Innotech wants the Pantheon Live environment at http://live-innotech.devportal.apigee.com to instead be: http://innotech.developer.com

Solution: To configure your own domain to point to your Apigee Dev Portal site, you will need to setup a CNAME in your DNS pointing the domain you want to edge.apigee.getpantheon.com. For example, the DNS setting for a fictitious company named Innotech would be:

developer.innotech.com. 3600 IN CNAME edge.apigee.getpantheon.com.

Note: It could take up to 48 hours for this DNS change to take effect for all client devices. You can then add this domain to your Pantheon dashboard, which can be found under the Domains / SSL tab. In most cases, you'll only need to configure DNS for the Live environment. If you need access to your Pantheon dashboard, please contact support with the email addresses you need added to your site. The instructions on the Pantheon dashboard will tell the customer to use CNAME edge.live.getpantheon.com, but this is incorrect. I have asked Pantheon to make a change to Apigee sites but they have not yet fixed this (as of Feb 2015) Customers should not use the Dev or Test environments for production use. For example, do not point developer.innotech.com to dev-innotech.devportal.apigee.com. Only paid customers can redirect their domain to their Dev Portal cloud site.

Visit https://pantheon.io/docs/articles/sites/domains/dns-records-for-directing-your-domain-to-your-pantheon-site/ for more information.

Useful Documentation Links

What is a developer portal:

http://apigee.com/docs/developer-services/content/what-developer-portal

Developer Portal FAQ:

http://apigee.com/docs/developer-services/content/developer-portal-faq

Communicating between the portal and Edge:

http://apigee.com/docs/developer-services/content/communicating-between-developer-services-portal-and-edge

Working with Pantheon:

http://apigee.com/docs/developer-services/content/working-pantheon

Add and edit content:

http://apigee.com/docs/developer-services/content/add-and-edit-content

SmartDocs is the documentation feature. It can consume Swagger as well as WADL:

http://apigee.com/docs/developer-services/content/using-smartdocs-document-apis

Apigee Edge APIs

Out the box, the Developer Portal uses the Developer and Developer App Apigee Edge APIs. Apigee Edge APIs (non-monetization): http://apigee.com/docs/api/apps-developer.

Edge Monetization APIs (used by Dev Portal): http://apigee.com/docs/developer-services/content/what-api-product

Complex Theming/Branding

Customizing the theme by creating a sub theme:

http://apigee.com/docs/developer-services/content/customizing-theme

http://DrupalizeMe.net has some great training tutorials.

Here's a great video tutorial on theming in Drupal 7:

Example Developer Portals using a sub theme:

http://developer.payeezy.com/

http://developer.gracenote.com

https://developer.gracenote.com/ja?language=ja

https://apideveloper.vantiv.com/

https://developer.inmarsat.com/