Effective communication is a critical factor for developer success when consuming an API. Since APIs do not have a user interface, your API portal is the primary method for communicating with developers on how to use your API. The API documentation you offer via your API portal is your API's user interface.

Effective communication is a critical factor for developer success when consuming an API. Since APIs do not have a user interface, your API portal is the primary method for communicating with developers on how to use your API. The API documentation you offer via your API portal is your API's user interface.

Takeaways: 

Let's examine why API documentation and developer portals are essential, examine the necessary elements for developer success, and then find out how to accelerate the creation and management of a developer portal for your APIs.

The Importance of API Documentation

API documentation is the primary communication medium between the API provider and developers consuming the API. Most API consumers will need access to the source code behind it. Therefore, the only thing that ensures developer success is your API portal and its documentation. With clear and complete documentation, developers can use your API.

We use API documentation as if there is only one kind of documentation. However, complete API documentation requires more than just your API reference docs, such as those generated using the OpenAPI Specification format. It requires a developer portal that pulls together everything they will need to succeed.

Who Uses a Developer Portal?

While developers are often the target persona for a developer portal, other personas also benefit from them:

A developer portal, therefore, must bring together the different styles of communication needed to ensure that APIs can be found and an understanding of the benefits of using the API. This is reflected in the various sections required to deliver an MVP portal.

Minimal Documentation for Developer Success

Every excellent developer portal includes the following sections:

How to Get Started with a Developer Portal

Below are some suggestions for how to get started with your developer portal:

Start with an overview section that should include the following:

Add authentication method(s) supported.

Capture common scenarios that the API solves.

Provide reference documentation.

Add code Samples and SDKs.

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Providing SDK Helper Libraries

Client-side helper libraries wrap the HTTP connection management, error detection, JSON marshaling, and other concerns for a single programming language. Some developers prefer helper libraries, as they help speed development by avoiding the need to deal with low-level HTTP concerns. They also enable code completion within popular integrated development environments (IDEs), which isn’t possible when working directly with HTTP. 

The work of hand-coding helper libraries for a dozen or more programming languages would require considerable time and resources. For many teams building and deploying APIs, code generators are used to create the SDK helper libraries without the need to hand-code them. The frequent challenge teams face keeping code-generated libraries in sync with the latest version of an API. Therefore, selecting tooling and a workflow that optimizes this round-trip work of API updates, deployment, and SDK code generation is essential. 

Don’t expect all developers to take advantage of helper libraries. Those familiar with HTTP prefer working directly rather than with a helper library. So, be prepared to support developers working directly with your API, as well as through the use of SDK helper libraries.

A Case Study in Developer Success

As is common with most API programs, an API program for a large enterprise IT group started with just a few key people. After a year of investment, the team produced several APIs that offered high-value digital capabilities for internal and external use. However, the team produced only reference documentation and needed a developer portal. This limited the success of developers trying to use the APIs, as developers were unaware of the API and needed direct access to the reference documentation.

After spending considerable resources, a developer portal was created to guide developers in understanding and using the APIs. Influential executives used the developer portal to evangelize the available APIs throughout the organization, resulting in increased demand for the APIs. The developer portal became a central communication tool and API promotion.

Tools and Frameworks for Developer Portals

One of the challenges of establishing a developer portal is to select a tool, or a series of tools, that helps produce the developer portal. Below are common tools that organizations have used to make their developer portal:

Static site generators: Tools such as [Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com/), used to power GitHub pages, and [Hugo](https://gohugo.io/) are common choices for creating developer portals. Pages are authored using Markdown or similar notation and are stored in a code repository. Work is still required to design, organize, and maintain the developer portal.

SwaggerUI: This tool started it all for the Swagger API description format, now separated from the tool as the OAS. This [open-source codebase](https://swagger.io/tools/swagger-ui/) renders any OAS v3 specification, plus older Swagger specification files, into API reference documentation. It is left to the organization to connect generated documentation into a complete developer portal.

APIwiz Developer portal: offers a user-friendly platform with customer centric features, including API Guides, API Reference, Use Cases, Dedicated Forums, and Custom Branding, enabling developers to discover ,access , share and collaborate on API Products and services

How to Quickly Get Started Building a Developer Portal

Portal generation requires considerable effort, from designing templates to organizing the full developer portal. Common tasks that require custom coding and automation include:

APIwiz addresses that problem by providing an automatically generated and updated developer portal for your APIs.