What is the Itential Adapter Builder?

The Itential Adapter Builder is an external tool, created to enable customers to rapidly build custom API integrations to any external system in the ecosystem and easily integrate with the Itential Automation Platform (IAP). These custom adapters along with Itential’s pre-built adapters, federate the functionalities of external systems to leverage them for end-to-end network automation using a single platform.

The Adapter Builder consumes API documents in swagger and open API formats, to generate adapters with 100% or selective API coverage to meet the needed requirements. The adapters are created with linting standards, unit tests, and integration test that operates in a standalone mode, or can be extended to work with an integrated external system. The custom adapters also support integrations directly to IAP workflows.

Utilizing a 7-step, form-based process, the Adapter Builder gets the necessary information from the API documentation of an external system to generate an adapter for it. The generated IAP Adapter consists of a multi-file system structure which includes auto generated code for unit and integration tests, along with best practices for the linting standards.

The amount of the code that is auto generated in this process is dependent on the desired API coverage selected by the user for that external system. To date, Itential has generated adapters that span multiple systems and domains such as Cloud, DevOps / NetOps, Controllers & Orchestrators, Inventory Management, SD-WAN, and more. These adapters are continuously open sourced for a quick download with necessary usage instructions. The Adapter Builder is a very powerful tool – for example, it has generated adapters with more than 1000 calls, which resulted in 1000+ unit and 1000 mock tests generating more than 80,000 lines of auto generated code.

Since adapters are responsible for integration between two systems, IAP and an external system, it is important to test the integration in multiple ways. A constructed custom adapter can be tested in a standalone mode by creating mock data from the provided documentation. The mock data can also be leveraged to test if it integrates successfully with IAP and works with IAP workflows as intended. Finally, conduct a full end-to-end test to isolate and resolve issues prior to moving the adapter into a production environment.

The Adapter Builder provides customers an efficient way to connect their IT/network ecosystem, saving them time and resources. We will continue to enhance the Adapter Builder to add new capabilities, such as – accept other API documents as input, improve integration testing, and update an adapter that was created with the Adapter Builder – to list just a few.

Start building your custom adapters to drive automation across your enterprise network by leveraging the full power of the Itential Automation Platform.

To see a full demo of Itential’s Adapter Builder in action, view here.