Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
114 lines (77 loc) · 7.63 KB

api-management-howto-properties.md

File metadata and controls

114 lines (77 loc) · 7.63 KB
title description services documentationcenter author manager editor ms.service ms.workload ms.tgt_pltfrm ms.topic ms.date ms.author
How to use named values in Azure API Management policies
Learn how to use named values in Azure API Management policies.
api-management
vladvino
erikre
api-management
mobile
na
article
01/08/2020
apimpm

How to use named values in Azure API Management policies

API Management policies are a powerful capability of the system that allow the Azure portal to change the behavior of the API through configuration. Policies are a collection of statements that are executed sequentially on the request or response of an API. Policy statements can be constructed using literal text values, policy expressions, and named values.

Each API Management service instance has a collection of key/value pairs, which is called named values, that are global to the service instance. There is no imposed limit on the number of items in the collection. Named values can be used to manage constant string values across all API configuration and policies. Each named value may have the following attributes:

Attribute Type Description
Display name string Used for referencing the named value in policies. A string of one to 256 characters. Only letters, numbers, dot, and dash are allowed.
Value string Actual value. Must not be empty or consist only of whitespace. Maximum of 4096 characters long.
Secret boolean Determines whether the value is a secret and should be encrypted or not.
Tags array of string Used to filter the named value list. Up to 32 tags.

Named values

Named values can contain literal strings and policy expressions. For example, the value of Expression is a policy expression that returns a string containing the current date and time. The named value Credential is marked as a secret, so its value is not displayed by default.

Name Value Secret Tags
Value 42 False vital-numbers
Credential •••••••••••••••••••••• True security
Expression @(DateTime.Now.ToString()) False

Note

Instead of named values stored within an API Management service, you can use values stored in the Azure Key Vault service as demonstrated by this example.

To add and edit a named value

Add a named value

  1. Select APIs from under API MANAGEMENT.

  2. Select Named values.

  3. Press +Add.

    Name and Value are required values. If value is a secret, check the This is a secret checkbox. Enter one or more optional tags to help with organizing your named values, and click Save.

  4. Click Create.

Once the named value is created, you can edit it by clicking on it. If you change the named value name, any policies that reference that named value are automatically updated to use the new name.

To delete a named value

To delete a named value, click Delete beside the named value to delete.

Important

If the named value is referenced by any policies, you will be unable to successfully delete it until you remove the named value from all policies that use it.

To search and filter named values

The Named values tab includes searching and filtering capabilities to help you manage your named values. To filter the named values list by name, enter a search term in the Search property textbox. To display all named values, clear the Search property textbox and press enter.

To filter the list by tag, enter one or more tags into the Filter by tags textbox. To display all named values, clear the Filter by tags textbox and press enter.

To use a named value

To use a named value in a policy, place its name inside a double pair of braces like {{ContosoHeader}}, as shown in the following example:

<set-header name="{{ContosoHeader}}" exists-action="override">
  <value>{{ContosoHeaderValue}}</value>
</set-header>

In this example, ContosoHeader is used as the name of a header in a set-header policy, and ContosoHeaderValue is used as the value of that header. When this policy is evaluated during a request or response to the API Management gateway, {{ContosoHeader}} and {{ContosoHeaderValue}} are replaced with their respective values.

Named values can be used as complete attribute or element values as shown in the previous example, but they can also be inserted into or combined with part of a literal text expression as shown in the following example: <set-header name = "CustomHeader{{ContosoHeader}}" ...>

Named values can also contain policy expressions. In the following example, the ExpressionProperty is used.

<set-header name="CustomHeader" exists-action="override">
    <value>{{ExpressionProperty}}</value>
</set-header>

When this policy is evaluated, {{ExpressionProperty}} is replaced with its value: @(DateTime.Now.ToString()). Since the value is a policy expression, the expression is evaluated and the policy proceeds with its execution.

You can test this out in the developer portal by calling an operation that has a policy with named values in scope. In the following example, an operation is called with the two previous example set-header policies with named values. Note that the response contains two custom headers that were configured using policies with named values.

Developer portal

If you look at the API Inspector trace for a call that includes the two previous sample policies with named values, you can see the two set-header policies with the named values inserted as well as the policy expression evaluation for the named value that contained the policy expression.

API Inspector trace

While named values can contain policy expressions, they can't contain other named values. If text containing a named value reference is used for a value, such as Text: {{MyProperty}}, that reference won't be resolved and replaced.

Next steps