Building Consumable APIs with Auto-Generated SDKs

Development teams spend an enormous amount of time building an API. How do you know it is consumable? We'll provide a look at how the Dude takes a contract first approach to building its APIs and the benefits of auto generated SDKs.

Transcript

1. Building Consumable APIs Brian Hyder @BrianHyder #DudeTechDay2016
2. What is an API? API noun an acronym that stands for Application Programming Interface. It provides a mechanism by which entities can interact with collections of data.
3. The Technical Problem “I need to send emails when things happen” “Easy enough, we can throw something together” “Well… It has to scale and be SOA compliant” “(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻”
4. Round 1 Design Notification API Message Processing Unified API Message Sending ????? “OK... Great... How do I call it from our other APIs? Umm.... Oh I know! We'll build an SDK”
5. The Process Problem SDKs are time consuming to write 1 week per language x 3 languages in our platform 3 person weeks
6. The Process Problem Dude, where’s my documentation? The contract was created from implementation
7. The Process Problem How do you test it?
8. Fast Forward 6 Months… “I need to schedule things” “Oh cool! We get to build an eventing engine!” “ ” “Don’t forget we’re contract first. Let’s checkout these companies”
9. Contract First adjective 1. The design principal where the API definition and documentation is put into place before any implementation begins 2. The act of keeping software engineers in sync with one another antonyms: blame, failure, delay
10. “These Companies” • San Francisco, CA • Open Source API documentation • Editor • Hosted documentation • GitHub Sync • Auckland, NZ • Auto-Generated Code from docs • Multiple Languages • Configurable per language • Excellent support
11. Test Driving Apiary
12. Automate All the Things 1 2 1. Documentation changes 2. Publish documentation 3. Build starts 4. Call to generate code 5. Blueprint downloaded 6. Publish package 3 4 5 6 Apiary TeamCity MyGet Apimatic GitHub
13. The Contract First Approach • Kickoff meeting (if necessary) • Contract is written and put into pull request • Once merged, development on all fronts can start
14. The Result SDK code for each language is generated, built, and packaged in 18 seconds Seconds < Weeks
15. Where do we go now? • Merge resolution • Better syntax validation • Local environment validation • Better strongly typed language Support • Better exception handling • Sync & Async support • Better Authentication support
16. Have Questions? brian.hyder@dudesolutions.com @BrianHyder www.linkedin.com/in/brianphyder