Building an API Client SDK
summary
Xero runs ~11 API sets (about 100 endpoints) driving 800 million API calls/month and 2.5 million webhooks, and maintains SDKs used by thousands of developers. Advice: do KD (know your developer), measure language demand from logs, and prefer OpenAPI + codegen feeding CI/CD so one engineer can support 2–3 SDKs instead of handcrafting many. Build models, auth helpers, and client wrappers; embed automatic retries and rate limiting, batching and paging; invest in template maintenance and real unit tests.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (11)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:19Jenks Guo
- 2:26Xero & Xero Ecosystem
- 3:57Content
- 4:52Why Bother?
- 9:21Who to build for?
- 11:38The Anatomy of an API Client SDK
- 14:37Hand-crafted SDKS
- 16:06Auto-generated SDKS
- 19:11It's an odyssey, not a drive-through.
- 20:08Bells & Whistles
related talks
23mGoing Global and Crossing Borders with APIs
32mGrowing an app ecosystem in Asia
28mDevelopers are People Too! Building a DX based API Strategy
26mAsk your Developer: the rise of the API company
37mBuilding next-gen API Developer Ecosystems
26mIs DX the new CX?
37mBuilding Developer-Centric APIs in a Multi-Product SaaS Org
25mWhat Developers Want