Michael Richardson & Tony Bommarito - Milk, Eggs and API's - Evolving an API Strategy at Kroger
API The Docs 2023 Developer Success & Developer Portals Recap
This talk was presented at APIDays New York 2023, Developer Success & Developer Portals track on 17 May. We are glad to present the video recording and the talk summary.
” We've always had a need to communicate and exchange information in a protocol fashion with other organizations, so this has been important to our organization for a long time.”
APIs have been around for a while at Kroger, but they were:
team and product specific, and
lacked organization.
First foray into Ecommerce
Quickly realized the level of unique business challenges, key enablers, and market differentiators were never going to be solved using a packed solution.
Solution: Microservices
Challenges:
Lack of consistency.
Various authorization and authentication models.
New types of consumers.
Consistency
To ensure consistency: formulate a style guide with the aspect of making a Grassroots endeavor:
Including the developers in the process of what and how the API should look.
Compliance with the style guide: using a live linter.
Security: OAuth 2 was adopted.
Discoverability
” In a large organization, it can take some work to find the APIs you need or even determine if they exist.”
Developer Marketplace was created to catalog all the APIs at Kroger.
To ensure it’s up to date: the API team built a code that could be run in pipelines to submit that OS specification with every new deployment to production.
Accessibility and Enablement
App registration was built next on the Developer Marketplace.
Rolled out a gateway to simplify access for external consumers.
The Enablement team is dedicated to curating quality documentation for the APIs.
Creating a central location for documentation on the Developer Marketplace.
Creating an integration layer for the partners:
information is exchanged through APIs.
Culture Shift
API first strategy:
Working with API contracts first, establishing what will be delivered and what the final contract will look like,
then the developers can build the API, and the QA team can start building test cases around the OS.
Shift left, so tests can be done earlier and issues can be discovered sooner.
Data-sharing governance can help move forward faster instead of creating blockers.
Key Takeaways
Continuous iteration
Governance is your friend
Focus on grassroots adoption
Shift left for speed and quality
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