sendgrid documentation & open source projects

Brandon West

Who am I ?

SendGrid Manager, Developer Relations

@bwest [email protected]

SendGridDocumentation& Open Source Projects

Copyright © KOZO KEIKAKU ENGINEERING Inc. All Rights Reserved

Why Documentation MattersProgrammableWeb.com API Survey Results


What Documentation Does

Reduce Support Tickets

Developers Self Serve

Establishes Credibility


API Workshop

Test the API from browser. No code. !New version coming soon!


Documentation Is Not Easy

• We are on our third version of documentation. The first 2 were bad.

• It’s a big job. We’re now hiring a person to manage it full time.

• Things are constantly changing


What Makes Sustainable Documentation?

• Change tracking / version control

• Ease of deploying changes

• Maintainability of platform

• Smart constraints

• Smart defaults

• Ease of editing content

• Defined structure

• These are a lot of the same things that make code sustainable.

!


Open Source Libraries

PHP Node.js Perl Python

https://github.com/sendgrid/

C# Obj-C Go Java


Most Popular Libraries

PHP C# Python Node.js

Based on views on Github over the last 2 weeks


Why Have Open Source Libraries?

• Reduce the amount of work it takes for new users to get started

• Developers like package managers such as npm, nuget, rubygems

• Provides example implementations even if devs don’t use them

• Lets us provide smart defaults — e.g. Web API instead of SMTP

• If we don’t build them, someone will. But we get the questions!

• It’s fun 😊


Not Just API Wrappers

• Our documentation is open source! github.com/sendgrid/docs

• New newsletter subscription widget is also open source

• We’re trying to open source more projects as well

http://github.com/sendgrid/docs

Thank you !!

sendgrid documentation & open source projects

Technology

version of documentation

sustainable documentation

open source librariesphpc

documentation matters

web api

api wrappers

api workshop

new version