Hey all, this is Nikhil Ramasastry. I work as a staff software engineer at Turo. I'm going to present my learnings of API first development. Embracing it has enhanced scalability and integration for Turo. To go over the agenda items, I will first introduce the concept and explain its core principles, specification formats, tools used for design, documentation, and testing. Then, we'll present you with use cases, later go over the benefits, challenges, mitigation strategies, and best practices. Eventually, we'll conclude. To start with the introduction, according to 2023 survey conducted by Postman, 67 percent of the developers expect to spend more time on the software. on developing an API or API work in general. At Turo, we often struggle with explicit versus implicit scope of an API without understanding the third party clients or front end developers or mobile developers. Over time, we have learned development of an API with respect to stakeholders who are using it defines its scope. Hence, API first development prioritizes designing APIs as a foundation of application development. At 2. 0, the backend development team has started involving stakeholders during the brainstorming sessions of API design. this help does close a lot of loose ends. Hence. We followed the pattern of define API contract, implement it, and test and apply. In application development, there is always a producer and consumer lifecycle. As a producer, we started defining the API endpoints and its request or response structure. With stakeholders in some cases we have mocked the data with loose coupling that enables scalability and flexibility Three these principles has enabled consumer to not worry the underlying complexity of an api in turn provided The abstraction and encapsulation as well. To give an overview on specification formats, we have used OpenAPI 3. 0. There are other formats like RESTful API Modeling Language and Markdown based API Blueprints for different use cases. Among these, OpenAPI stands out clearly as it supports JSON and YAML and generates codes extensively. As part of OpenAPI 1st development to establish smooth collaboration, we used design tools like Stoplight, Swagger, and Postman for testing and marking requests or responses. Swagger UI is very handy with respect to documentation, where we have explicitly collaborated about things like HTTP error codes and etc. API first development can be applied in use cases like independent scaling microservices, content management systems, mobile applications, and Internet of Things ecosystems. After practicing API first development for a few projects, our developers are never going back to code first approach. As API first development provides scalability, flexibility with better integration. It enhanced developer experience by 29 percent and API adoption rate by 35 percent for our teams. The challenges to implement API first development started with huge learning curve. With key challenges around versioning and security concerns manage to handle these challenges with Few breakout sessions from time to time and training around tools like swagger and open api 3. 0 adoption Started to follow versioning policies strictly and API gateways and doing regular audits have helped us from security standpoint. Here are the few best practices for implementation of API first development. Brainstorm design of an API with intention to future proof it. Implement robust error handling and validation. Update outdated documentation from time to time. Involve stakeholders early and gather feedback. That helps a lot and effectively versioning the APIs for smooth transitions also helps. In conclusion, API first development is revolutionizing the modern software architecture by emphasizing scalability, flexibility, and superior integrations capabilities. By designing APIs as foundation layer, organization organizations can foster parallel development. enhance collaboration between the teams, ultimately accelerating the time to market for their products. Two row experience with technology leaders such as Uber, GitHub and Stripe have demonstrated the significant advantages of adopting an API for strategy from improved system modularity to seamless third party integrations. Thank you for your time. Have a nice day. Bye.