Applications
Understand applications in the Developer Portal, which group subscriptions and credentials for a specific project or use case.
An application is a container that a developer creates in the Developer Portal to group subscriptions and credentials for a specific project or use case. Applications provide an organizational layer between a developer and the API products they consume.
Purpose
Applications serve several purposes:
- Logical grouping: A developer working on multiple projects can create separate applications for each one, keeping credentials and subscriptions organized.
- Credential isolation: Each application has its own set of credentials. Revoking or rotating credentials for one application does not affect others.
- Subscription management: Subscriptions are created at the application level. A developer subscribes an application to an API product, not the developer account directly.
- Usage tracking: API usage statistics can be tracked per application, providing visibility into which project is consuming which APIs.
Structure
An application contains the following fields:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | A human-readable name for the application. |
| Description | Optional description of the application's purpose. |
| Labels | Optional key-value pairs for categorization. |
Each application belongs to a single developer and is scoped to a single portal. Applications are identified by a unique ID generated at creation time.
Relationship to Other Entities
- A developer can have multiple applications.
- An application can subscribe to multiple API products.
- An application can contain multiple credentials (of different types).
- Subscriptions link an application to an API product.
Lifecycle
- Create: A developer creates an application in the Developer Portal, providing a name and optional description.
- Subscribe: The developer subscribes the application to one or more API products. Depending on the product's configuration, subscriptions may require approval.
- Add credentials: The developer creates credentials within the application. The credential type must match one of the authentication types enabled on the subscribed API product.
- Use: The developer uses the credentials to make authenticated API requests through the gateway.
- Delete: Deleting an application also deletes all its credentials and cancels all its subscriptions.