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If you’ve setup your own API methods and are having some trouble getting the resources to show up in the admin console’s resource list, make sure that each resource ACL group node and each each individual ACL node in api.xml have a module= translation attribute
<assign_simple_product_to_configurable translate="title" module="pulsestorm_mercuryapi">
It turns out the block responsible for building a list of these resources to render as JSON (Mage_Adminhtml_Block_Api_Tab_Rolesedit) checks for this attribute, and if it doesn’t find it, will skip rendering the role in the Admin console, meaning the role can’t ever be assigned.