The document discusses API emulators as an emerging best practice for API providers. It describes Stève Sfartz's background and role at Cisco developing tools for developers. It then discusses how emulators can enhance the developer experience by allowing local testing and debugging of APIs without access to production services. Specific examples of emulators created for Cisco's Tropo and Webex APIs are presented, along with lessons learned around their development and use cases. The presentation concludes by advocating for API providers to consider adding emulators to better support their developer communities.

1. Stève Sfartz, Cisco DevNet
API Architect and Developer Advocates Manager
stsfartz@cisco.com
API World 2018
Emulators as an Emerging Best
Practice for API Providers

2. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
• API Veteran, Hobbyist Coder, Hands-On Architect
• Building code samples & dev tools, provide feedback, fill gaps
• Manager of a WW team of Developer Evangelists
• Application Development Practices (IoT, Collab, Cloud, DevOps)
• Technical lead for the Cisco « API Style Guide »
• What excites me? Providing great Developer eXperiences
About me: //Cisco/DevNet/SteveSfartz

3. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
• 500K+ members
• Dev Centers, Labs, Sandboxes
• Tutos
Join DevNet
twitter: @CiscoDevNet
github: @CiscoDevNet
webex: stsfartz@cisco.com
twitter: @SteveSfartz
github: @ObjectIsAdvantag

4. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
Industry trends, Live demos, Lessons learnt
Emulators as an Emerging Best
Practice for API Providers

5. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
• Containers -> deploy everywhere as a ‘black-box’
• CI/CD pipelines -> don’t break my flow
• Sandboxes -> give me access
• Serverless -> test and debug locally
Industry Trends & Developer Experience

6. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
Enhance the user experience
in Meeetings Rooms
• People Count
• Administration APIs
• Custom UI controls for IoT
Sandboxes at Cisco DevNet
Webex RoomKit

7. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
In-Room Controls Simulator
https://controls-editor.herokuapp.com/playground.html?virtualroom
End-to-end enriched
User Experience for
Meeting Rooms
• In-Room Control
• Node.js jsxapi

8. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential

9. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
Prototype with the RoomKit Sandboxes

10. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
Coding for Serverless Platforms

11. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
Coding for Serverless Platforms

12. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
• Cisco Tropo is « telephony platform as a service »
• In-bound / out-bound Calls and SMS
• REST API endpoint
• Runs 5 languages as Serverless (JS, Python, Java, Groovy, PHP)
• Feedback from one year of evangelism
• hackathons, meetups, tutorials
• great platform
• bad debugging experience
An Emulator for Tropo Serverless Platform

13. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
IVR script sample: auto-attendant

14. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
Running Tropo Script locally

15. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
• « Think big, Start small »
• Start from use cases
• « check scripts won’t break »
• « debug locally »
• Prototype / Evaluate / Arbitrate
• A Javascript emulator that mimics the platform
• 2 days to prototype during a DevNet Hack-a-tone
• 5 days to beta running all scripts (17 commits total)
• https://github.com/ObjectIsAdvantag/tropo-emulator-js
Lessons learnt building the Tropo Emulator

16. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
Taking emulators to the next stage
https://github.com/ObjectIsAdvantag/tropo-ready-vscode

19. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
• Providing an emulator opens a world of possibilities
• Better if opensource
• Visual Studio extension
• Live running by exposing local scripts to Tropo cloud
• 5 days, started with a Hack-a-tone again
• https://github.com/ObjectIsAdvantag/tropo-ready-vscode
Lessons learnt

20. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
• A twin of your API
• Fully operational
• Generally NOT fully-featured
• Implementing one or several use cases
• Built to help your API consumers tests & debug
What’s an API emulator

21. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
‘Your App’
now with Cisco
Cloud Collab!
Webex Teams APIs
extend Cisco Cloud Collaboration
GET
POST
DELETE
PUT /Rooms
/Memberships
/Messages
/Teams
/People
/Webhooks

23. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
Webex API Emulator
https://github.com/ObjectIsAdvantag/webex-api-emulator

24. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential

25. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
Meet the Webex API Emulator

26. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
Webex Teams Bot Architecture
 Register webhook events
• Messages / created
 Memberships / created
 As events happen in spaces,
receive notifications from
Webex
 Security tips
 Select spaces to fire from via
a webhook filter
 Check on user’s email domain
in your code
 Check webhook payload
signature via a shared secret
Webex
cloud platform
1. interacts in spaces
via a Teams client
Webex Teams
User
Your bot code running
on-premises or on in the cloud
2. posts notifications to
registered Webhooks
3. posts back messages
as notifications fly in
Publicly accessible
bot endpoint

27. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
1. Testing (devops)
2. QA (non-regression, versioning)
3. Experimentating (API design, vNext)
4. Backup (training in restricted environments)
Uses cases for API Emulators

28. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
• Scope
• Think big, Start small
• Document the use cases you want to cover
• Design your emulator
• Keep it light (in-memory persistance)
• Hyper quick to implement: couple of days
• Build
• Pick a raw HTTP framework to have maximum flexibility to mimic your
payloads
Lessons learnt

29. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
• Are there alternatives?
- API Emulator vs Mocking
- API Emulator vs Service Virtualization
• How to compare ?
- Start from your use cases!
Thoughs

30. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
• Who are the customers of your API emulator?
- your developer community
- Internally (Product Management)
Thoughts

31. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
• Seriously consider adding Emulator(s) to your API Product
• Narrow the use cases your emulator will cover
• Build it in hours/days, not weeks/months
• Opensource it: building block for other use cases & tools
• Observe how your developer community leverages it
• Add a disclaimer (best-effort)
Wrapup

32. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
• Webex Emulator
• https://github.com/ObjectIsAdvantag/webex-api-emulator
• Tropo Emulator
• https://github.com/ObjectIsAdvantag/tropo-emulator-js
• Tropo-Ready plugin for Visual Studio code
• https://github.com/ObjectIsAdvantag/tropo-ready-vscode
• DevNet Code Exchange
• https://developer.cisco.com/codeexchange/
Resources

33. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
• 500K+ members
• Dev Centers, Labs, Sandboxes
• Tutos
Join DevNet
twitter: @CiscoDevNet
webex: stsfartz@cisco.com
twitter: @SteveSfartz
github: @ObjectIsAdvantag

34. © 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
Thank you