Publishing virtual topics to IBM API Connect Developer Portal

You can publish virtual topics from Event Endpoint Management to IBM API Connect Developer Portal to make them available to users alongside your organization’s APIs and other services.

Before you begin

Ensure that you have the following prerequisites in place:

  • IBM API Connect Developer Portal v12.1.1 or later is installed and accessible.
  • Integration between Event Endpoint Management and Developer Portal is configured.
  • At least one gateway group is associated with your Event Manager instance.
  • The virtual topic is configured with an authentication set that uses SASL credentials.
  • The virtual topic has the Require approval toggle set to Off.

Publishing a virtual topic to Developer Portal

To publish a virtual topic to Developer Portal, complete the following steps:

Note: You cannot edit the controls within a virtual topic after it is published.

  1. Log in to the Event Endpoint Management UI by using your login credentials.
  2. In the navigation pane, click Manage > Topics. A list of source topics is displayed.
  3. Select the source topic that contains the virtual topic you want to publish.
  4. Click the Virtual topics tab.
  5. For the virtual topic that you want to publish, click Publish.

  6. In the Publish virtual topic dialog, configure the following settings:

    • Gateway group: Select a gateway group from the available options. The gateway group provides runtime access to the virtual topic.

      Note:

      • When only one gateway is available, it is selected by default. If you have multiple gateways, you can choose a gateway group from the available options.
      • Some controls require a supported gateway. If you attempt to publish a virtual topic to a gateway that does not support specific controls, a notification is displayed to inform you that this action is not possible.
      • You can only publish virtual topics to gateway groups that contain a gateway that has passed the validation checks for the cluster and source topic.
      • The target gateway group must have enough hostnames to match the number of brokers across all Kafka clusters that all the topics published to this gateway group use.

    • Publishing destination: Select where you want to publish the virtual topic:

      • Event Endpoint Management catalog: Publish to the Event Endpoint Management catalog only.
      • Developer Portal: Publish to IBM API Connect Developer Portal only.
      • Both: Publish to both the Event Endpoint Management catalog and Developer Portal.
  7. Click Publish.

The virtual topic is now published to the selected destination and is available for discovery and subscription.

Viewing published virtual topics in Developer Portal

After publishing a virtual topic to Developer Portal, users can discover and subscribe to it through the portal interface:

  1. Log in to Developer Portal.
  2. Go to the Asset gallery.
  3. Search for the published virtual topic that you want to work with.
  4. Click on the virtual topic to view its details, including:
    • Description and documentation
    • Schema information
    • Sample messages
    • Code accelerator samples
    • Subscription options

Users can then subscribe to the virtual topic to obtain credentials for accessing it. For more information, see Using Developer Portal.

Managing published virtual topics

After publishing a virtual topic to Developer Portal, you can manage it from the Manage topics page in the Event Endpoint Management UI.

Updating virtual topic details

To update the details of a published virtual topic:

  1. In the Event Endpoint Management UI, navigate to Manage > Topics.
  2. Select the source topic containing the virtual topic.
  3. Click the Virtual topics tab.
  4. Click the virtual topic you want to update.
  5. Make the necessary changes to the description, tags, or other editable fields.
  6. Click Save.

The changes are automatically synchronized with Developer Portal.

Note: You cannot edit controls after a virtual topic is published. To change controls, you must unpublish the virtual topic, make the changes, and then republish it.

Unpublishing a virtual topic

To unpublish a virtual topic from Developer Portal:

  1. In the Event Endpoint Management UI, navigate to Manage > Topics.
  2. Select the source topic containing the virtual topic.
  3. Click the Virtual topics tab.
  4. For the virtual topic you want to unpublish, click Unpublish.
  5. In the confirmation dialog, select the destination from which you want to unpublish:
    • Event Endpoint Management catalog
    • Developer Portal
    • Both
  6. Click Unpublish.

The virtual topic is removed from the selected destinations and is no longer available for new subscriptions. Existing subscriptions remain active until they are revoked or expire.

For troubleshooting information related to publishing virtual topics to Developer Portal, see the troubleshooting section.