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Introduction

Tyk Dashboard diagram The Tyk Dashboard is a web-based interface that serves as the central management hub for your API ecosystem. It provides a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) for configuring, monitoring, and analyzing your APIs managed by Tyk. The Dashboard also exposes a REST API, allowing for programmatic control and integration with other tools and workflows.

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Exploring the Dashboard UI

To get a tour of the Dashboard UI, refer to this document.

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Exploring the Dashboard API

The Dashboard is a large, granular REST API with a thin-client web front-end, and if being deployed as part of a Tyk install, serves as the main integration point instead of the Gateway API. API Overview The Dashboard API is a superset of the Gateway API, providing the same functionality, with additional features (anything that can be done in the Dashboard has an API endpoint), and offers some additional advantages:
  • The Dashboard API has a granular structure, you can create separate clients easily.
  • The API features read/write permissions on a per-endpoint level to have extra control over integrations.
  • The API enforces a schema that can be modified and hardened depending on your usage requirements.

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Types of Dashboard API

The Dashboard exposes two APIs:
  • Dashboard API: Is used for operational management of Tyk resources (APIs, policies, keys, etc.). This API offers granular permissions based on user roles. To know more about the Dashboard API, refer to the Tyk Dashboard API documentation.
  • Dashboard Admin API: Is used for system-level administration and initial setup tasks like managing organizations, initial user creation, backups/migrations and SSO setup. To know more about the Dashboard Admin API, refer to the Tyk Dashboard Admin API documentation.

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Authenticating with Dashboard APIs

Dashboard API The Tyk Dashboard API is secured using an Authorization header that must be added to each request that is made. The Tyk Dashboard API Access Credentials Authorization key can be found within the Dashboard UI at the bottom of the Edit User section for a user. Dashboard Admin API The Tyk Dashboard Admin API is secured using a shared secret that is set in the tyk_analytics.conf file. Calls to the Admin API require the admin-auth header to be provided, to differentiate the call from a regular Dashboard API call.

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Data Storage Solutions

Tyk Dashboard requires a persistent datastore for its operations, shared with Tyk MDCB and Tyk Pump. See Core Platform Persistent Database for the categories of data it stores, supported engines, connection configuration, and connection pool tuning.