CREATING A GREAT DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE

THROUGH SDKS

Developer Evangelist at Keen IO taylor@keen.io

@taylor_atx

TAYLOR BARNETT

@taylor_atx

Collect & store data from users, websites, apps &

smart devices.

Query instantly to share results with teams &

customers, anywhere.

@taylor_atx

LET’S BE REAL ABOUT SDKS

@taylor_atx

Most API providers aren’t updating their SDKs enough

😞

@taylor_atx

Get the most attention when they are 🔥broken🔥

@taylor_atx

Many of SDKs are now open source, which is great, but…

@taylor_atx

There are a lot of great HTTP request libraries out there now

🎉

@taylor_atx

We could talk for a really long time about why using SDKs aren’t great

@taylor_atx

WHY SHOULD YOU PROVIDE SDKS?

@taylor_atx

Most of the time using an API is important, but peripheral to why the

software is being written

@taylor_atx

Your SDKs are your API

@taylor_atx

SDKs give quick feedback on how your API works

@taylor_atx

There’s a business case for putting resources into SDKs

@taylor_atx

OTHER REASONS

• When there’s no good built in HTTP request library

• Error handling

• Building clients with 100% API coverage

• Helping users with authentication

• Best practices with complex APIs

@taylor_atx

CREATING A GREAT DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE

@taylor_atx

PRODUCT VS COMMUNITY SDKS

• Clearly define the two to set better expectations

• If you don’t build them, Community SDKs will appear

• Leads to a scattered developer experience

• Community SDK bugs will appear in your Support channels

@taylor_atx

DOCUMENTATION

• Write the SDK documentation first

• Consistency

• Helps evaluate the experience

@taylor_atx

DOCUMENTATION

• Include sections for

• Troubleshooting, with common errors and issues users run into —> Your Support team will love you for this

• Changelog or release notes

@taylor_atx

SCARY WORLD OF DEPENDENCIES

• Help your users navigate it

• Users need to know changes between SDK versions

• Survey your options

😱

@taylor_atx

DANGERS OF NOT MAKING YOUR OWN SDKS

• Not eating your own dog food is dangerous

• Helps you understand the cost of building with your own API

• It’s also encouragement to add new API features into your SDK when they released, not later

@taylor_atx

NATIVE AS POSSIBLE

• Please do not auto generate SDKs badly from your API

• Example: Go find a Go developer to write your Go SDK

• Start with the languages that are the most popular for your target audience and that your team is familiar with

@taylor_atx

COMMON DATA STRUCTURES

• Avoid inconsistency in your users’ code

• Example: JSON is a great option for representing data

• Want to map well to data structures in many different languages

@taylor_atx

USAGE TRACKING

• Great opportunity to learn about your users

• Critical statistics for developing, maintaining, and improving your SDKs

• Every popular API company today is tracking this: SendGrid, Twilio, Stripe, Dropbox, etc.

@taylor_atx

📊

# Example from the Twilio Python module # https://github.com/twilio/twilio-python

user_agent = "twilio-python %s (python-%s)" % ( LIBRARY_VERSION, platform.python_version(), )

headers = { "User-Agent": user_agent, "Accept-Charset": "utf-8", }

USAGE TRACKING

@taylor_atx

EXAMPLES

@taylor_atx

💖 THANK YOU!

taylor@keen.io @taylor_atx