Lessons from helping developers integrate 1,000 APIs with Zapier

Talk at a Nordic APIs webcast (LiveCast) on API Usability & Developer Experience

- https://nordicapis.com/sessions/lessons-helping-developers-integrate-1000-apis-zapier/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZRRz9t6su0&feature=youtu.be&start=2028

Transcript

1. LESSONS FROM HELPING DEVELOPERS
   INTEGRATE 1,000 APIS WITH
   ZAPIER
   

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2. FOKKEZB.NL/ABOUT
   ZAPIER SUPPORT ENGINEER
   Resolve Technical Questions Once And For All
   

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3. ZAPIER.COM/ABOUT
   > September 2011 Idea
   > May 2012 Y Combinator Graduation
   > September 2012 Raised $1.3M
   > May 2014 Profitable
   > June 2016 At 1M Users, $10M ARR
   > August 2017 At 100 Zapiens (or Zorps)
   > January 2018 At 1K Apps, $35M ARR
   

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4. CHAIN APIS WITH NO CODE
   

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6. INTEGRATE WITH ZAPIER TO INTEGRATE WITH 1,000
   > Define Triggers (GET or Webhooks)
   > Define Actions (POST)
   > Watch users build Zaps across Apps
   > Profit
   

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7. LESSONS FROM HELPING DEVELOPERS
   INTEGRATE 1,000 APIS WITH
   ZAPIER
   

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8. DON'T REINVENT THE WHEEL
   > REST JSON
   > OAuth 2.0 w/refresh
   > REST Hooks
   > OpenAPI ❋
   Zapier is heavily optimized for these
   standards.
   

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9. DON'T SAVE ON DOCS
   > Exists
   > Complete
   > Versioned
   > Public: Developer Marketing Material
   > Standard: OpenAPI (Swagger)
   Zapier will support scaffolding integrations with OpenAPI.
   

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10. SECRET TOKENS ARE SACRED
    > Never expire...
    > unless we have a Refresh Token...
    > (which should never expire)
    > ...until the user revokes.
    

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11. WORK THAT BODY
    > Limiting: limit, since
    > Pagination: page, since, meta
    > Filtering & Searching
    > Field Masks: fields
    GraphQL is awesome at all this, but at the cost of more
    complexity and no builtin support by Zapier.
    

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12. ORDER!
    > Field: created_at
    > Direction: DESC
    > Ideally multiple combinations
    Worst Case? Sorted from old to new,
    with pagination but no meta data.
    

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13. CONSIDER REST HOOKS
    > We won't call you... you call Us
    > Better UX than (Static) Webhooks +24%
    > Reduces server Load & Traffic 66x
    > Triggers Zaps Instantly
    Zapier has started to require REST Hooks for Public Apps.
    

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14. HTTP STATUS CODES ARE THERE FOR A REASON
    HTTP/1.0 200 OK
    Content-Type: application/json
    {
    "status": "error",
    "code": 404,
    "message": "Object is not found."
    }
    

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15. ...AS ARE HTTP METHODS
    GET /book/add?title=APIs+For+Dummies HTTP/1.0
    HTTP/1.0 201 Created
    Content-Type text/plain
    Got it!
    

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16. ...AND CONTENT-TYPE HEADERS
    > Send what you say you will
    HTTP/1.0 400 Bad Request
    Content-Type: application/json
    Parameter 'id' is missing.
    > Don't mix content types
    HTTP/1.0 401 Unauthorized
    Content-Type: text/html
    
    Login
    ...
    

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17. MORE?
    > Tech Blog: zapier.com/engineering
    > Platform: zapier.com/developer
    

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18. Q&API
    

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