Service Catalog:Integration overview

Versions

OpenAPI Explorer uses version numbers to manage major versions of cloud service API operations. For example, Service Catalog supports the API of the 2021-09-01 version. 2021-09-01 is a version number, not the date when the API was last updated. Each version provides the latest API data.

Online debugging

You can call Service Catalog API operations in OpenAPI Explorer. Before you start, make sure you understand the API version, endpoints, and integration methods.

In OpenAPI Explorer, select the GetProductAsEndUser operation for debugging. For Service Address, select the target region, such as China (Hangzhou). In the parameter configuration area, enter the required parameter ProductId (Product ID, string, for example, prod-bp18r7q127****), and then click Initiate Call. Before making the call, ensure that an administrator has granted the end user permissions to use the product. You can obtain the ProductId from the responses of operations such as UpdateProduct, LaunchProduct, CreateProduct, ListProductsAsAdmin, and GetProductVersion.

Online debugging page

You can debug the API operations on the following page: Service Catalog API debugging list

Endpoints

Select an endpoint based on the region in which your resource resides to reduce latency. For example, if your Service Catalog resides in the China (Hangzhou) region, the public endpoint is servicecatalog.cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com, and the VPC endpoint is servicecatalog-vpc.cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com.

• Public endpoints can be globally accessed.

• VPC endpoints are accessible only within a VPC in a specific Alibaba Cloud region. VPC endpoints provide the following benefits:

  • Higher security: VPC endpoints are accessible only within a VPC, which provides stronger security and privacy.

  • Faster response: VPC endpoints use the internal network, which delivers faster responses and avoids network latency and bandwidth limits.

  • Lower cost: VPC endpoints are accessed over an internal network.

For more information, see Endpoints.

User identities

After you log on to OpenAPI Explorer with your Alibaba Cloud account, OpenAPI Explorer uses that account for online debugging by default. Because an Alibaba Cloud account has permissions on all API operations, using it for debugging poses security risks. We recommend that you call API operations as a RAM user instead. Before you do so, grant the required permissions to the RAM user based on your business requirements. The RAM user must have permissions to manage Service Catalog. For more information, see Use RAM for access control.

References

• Identity, credential, and authorization

• Throttling and quota management

Overview of integration methods

• Alibaba Cloud SDKs

  • Alibaba Cloud provides SDKs in multiple programming languages, including Java, C#, Go, Python, Node.js, TypeScript, PHP, and C++. SDKs encapsulate the signature logic, timeout mechanism, and retry mechanism, and return structured response objects. For more information, see Alibaba Cloud SDKs.

  • You can use an Alibaba Cloud SDK to call Service Catalog operations. For information about supported languages and how to install dependencies, see Service Catalog SDK.

• Alibaba Cloud CLI

  • Alibaba Cloud CLI allows you to run aliyun commands to manage Alibaba Cloud services and resources. For more information, see What is Alibaba Cloud CLI?

  • You cannot use Alibaba Cloud CLI to call the API operations of Service Catalog.

• ROS

  • ROS is an Alibaba Cloud service that simplifies cloud resource management. You can create a template to describe the resources you need, such as ECS and ApsaraDB RDS instances, and their dependencies. ROS then automatically creates and configures all resources based on the template. For more information, see What is ROS?

  • You cannot use ROS to call the API operations of Service Catalog.

• Custom encapsulation

  To make native HTTP calls, you must construct custom requests and sign the requests. For more information about the signature method, see List of operations by function and Request syntax and signature method V3.