How can I use IBM IAM to access my Cloudant instance?

Question

Can I use the IBM IAM console to create a new ServiceID with an api key, for the purpose of accessing an IBM Cloudant instance?

Answer 1

Yes you can! The IBM IAM service allows you to create a ServiceID, which is a machine-usable 'persona'. Then you can create an API key for it and give it permissions to access one or more IBM services, like Cloudant.

Start at https://cloud.ibm.com/iam and then:

• Create a new ServiceID
• Under Access Policies, click Assign Access. Here you can choose the service that you want to access and what roles you want to authorise (e.g. Reader, Writer, etc). Here you can assign more than one service to the same ServiceID.

• Under API Keys, choose Create. This will create an API key which you can download.

Now you can use the API key in your application and you should be able to access your service.

Individual IBM services normally offer their own access mechanisms. But the advantage of this method is that you can use the same API key to access multiple services (e.g. Cloudant, Cloud Object Storage) from your application.