Connectors
The ‘connectors’ link in the upper-right opens a window which can be used to define, edit, and import connectors to external API providers. In order to use an API service in an ACP Workflow, you must first define a connector to its service.
To edit an existing connector, click the ‘select’ drop-down and pick it from the menu.
To create a new connector, click the ‘select’ drop-down and pick the service type you would like this connector to be.
ACP currently supports the following connector types:
- 6connect ProVision
- 6connect ACP
- Google Compute
- Microsoft Azure
- Amazon AWS
- Kubernetes
You can define your own connectors to services not natively supported by ProVision by using the ‘Generic Connectors’ functionality, described in a later section.
Once you have picked a connector type, the form updates itself with the locations and credentials required to make calls against this service. The ‘test’ button at the bottom of the window verifies whether or not the supplied information validates against the API service, and the ‘apply’ button saves the new connector.
New connectors are automatically added to the current workflow.
Generic Connectors
The Generic Connector system is designed to allow ACP to support API-providing systems which do not have a predefined built-in connector. For example, there may be a network appliance which offers an API that ACP does not natively support. In this case the user can employ a Generic Connector to manually define the API endpoints offered by this appliance and then integrate its functions with an ACP workflow as normal.
The Generic Connector section can be found by clicking on the graph icon on the left-hand navigation bar.
This brings up the main Generic Connectors List screen.
The Generic Connectors List screen. From this screen you can edit or delete existing Generic Connectors.
Clicking on ‘Add Connector’ brings up a form which allows the user to name the new connector, add a short description, and pick the authentication type and communications protocol this connector will employ.
Authentication methods currently supported are “HTTP Basic”, “vCenter”, and “None.”
The only communications protocol currently supported is “HTTP.”
Completing the form and clicking the ‘add’ button will add the Generic Connector to the connectors list.
Endpoints can be added to a Generic Connector by clicking on the ‘edit’ icon to the right of each Connector’s name. This brings up a screen which displays a form for adding new Endpoints above the list for managing existing Endpoints.
The General Options area is where the information necessary to properly execute the API action is defined. There are several fields:
Unique call name: the name for this endpoint within ACP.
Endpoint http method: the HTTP header for accessing this endpoint (GET, POST, etc).
Endpoint pathname: the path of this API action. Note: the connector configuration modal on each ACP Workflow will ask you for the location of the API service. This pathname is the path to be used *after* the location of the service is defined. For example, if an API endpoint is “https://127.0.0.1/services/action1/”, the connector location will be defined as “https://127.0.0.1/services” and the endpoint pathname will be “/action1/”.
Endpoint family name: ACP organizes API endpoints into families for easier lookups. This field allows you to define what family this endpoint falls into. Families are automatically created from the contents of this field.
Friendly endpoint name: a more user-friendly name for this endpoint.
Endpoint description: a short description of what this endpoint does.
Rollback call: the unique call name which will be invoked if this call fails and rollbacks are enabled. Optional.
Use this call to test credentials: When the user is filling out the connector’s location and authentication details in a Workflow the ‘test’ button does a quick call to a specified endpoint to verify the credentials are working. This toggle defines whether or not this endpoint is appropriate for this test.
Content-type header: The content-type header sent to the API service by the HTTP protocol.
Once a Generic Connector has been defined it can be selected from the Connectors section of any Workflow.