ActionTrail:Overview

Version description

Alibaba Cloud APIs use version numbers to manage the versions of cloud service APIs. For example, ActionTrail supports the API of the 2020-07-06 version. 2020-07-06 is an API version number instead of a date. Users are provided with the latest public information about the API. 2020-07-06 is the up-to-date version of the ActionTrail API.

Online debugging

ActionTrail provides features such as API debugging in OpenAPI Explorer. Before you call API operations, take note of the following information provided by ActionTrail: versions, endpoints, and integration methods.

Debugging page

Access OpenAPI Explorer.

Endpoints

We recommend that you select an endpoint based on the region in which the resource you want to access resides to reduce latency. For example, if ActionTrail resides in the China (Zhangjiakou) region, the public endpoint is actiontrail.cn-zhangjiakou.aliyuncs.com and the virtual private cloud (VPC) endpoint is actiontrail-vpc.cn-zhangjiakou.aliyuncs.com

• Public endpoints can be globally accessed.

• VPC endpoints are accessible only within a VPC in a specific Alibaba Cloud region. The following list describes the benefits of VPC endpoints:

  • High security: VPC endpoints can be accessed only from within a VPC. This provides higher security and privacy.

  • Fast response: VPC endpoints deliver faster responses than public endpoints because VPC endpoints enable data transmission over VPCs. In addition, problems such as network latency and bandwidth limitations can be avoided.

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

For more information, see Endpoints.

Identities

After you log on to OpenAPI Explorer by using your Alibaba Cloud account, OpenAPI Explorer uses your Alibaba Cloud account to perform online debugging by default. An Alibaba Cloud account has permissions on all API operations. If you use an Alibaba Cloud account to call API operations, security risks may arise. We strongly recommend that you call API operations or perform routine O&M as a Resource Access Management (RAM) user. Before you call API operations as a RAM user, grant the required permissions to the RAM user based on your business requirements. The RAM user must have the permissions to manage ActionTrail resources. For more information, see Use RAM to implement access control.

References

• Identity, credential, and authorization

• Throttling and quota management

Integration methods

• Alibaba Cloud SDK

  • Alibaba Cloud provides SDKs in multiple programming languages, including Java, C#, Go, Python, TypeScript, Node.js, PHP, and C++. You can integrate SDKs into your applications to directly call API operations. SDKs encapsulate various information, including the data signing logic, timeout mechanism, and retry mechanism. SDKs return structured response objects based on specifications to facilitate development. For more information, see Alibaba Cloud SDK.

  • You can use SDKs to call the API operations of ActionTrail. For more information about supported languages and dependencies, see ActionTrail SDK.

• Alibaba Cloud CLI

  • Alibaba Cloud CLI is a general-purpose command-line tool that is developed based on the Alibaba Cloud API. You can use Alibaba Cloud CLI to interact with Alibaba Cloud services and manage your Alibaba Cloud services by using a shell tool. For more information about Alibaba Cloud CLI, see What is Alibaba Cloud CLI?

  • You can use Alibaba Cloud CLI to call the API operations of ActionTrail..

• ROS

  • ROS is an Alibaba Cloud service that can simplify the management of cloud computing resources. You can create a template to describe the cloud computing resources that you need, such as Elastic Compute Service (ECS) and ApsaraDB RDS instances, and the relationship between the resources. ROS automatically creates and configures all the resources based on the template to implement automated deployment and O&M. For more information, see What is ROS?.

  • You can use ROS to call the API operations of ActionTrail. For more information, see Work with ROS.

• Custom API encapsulation

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