MadCode Meetup is a monthly webinar held by Stanfy Team for knowledge sharing about mobile development. Anastasi, iOS Engineer at Stanfy, talked about effective interactions between mobile and backend developers to find the ways of productive communications with the latter not spending their time on finding who made errors but rather building great products together. Read the article here: https://stanfy.com/blog/madcode-meetup1/ Join our MadCode group on FB (rus): https://www.facebook.com/MadCodeMeetup/ Watch more videos from MadCode Meetups (rus): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrplqd3YJvBvUygFkx4Xvx1p3zyiCgB9Q

1. Making friends with
backend developers
Making friends with backend developers. Stanfy MadCode Meetup, 2014. 1

2. Making friends with
backend developers
Well, at least don't fight
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3. Own experience
• Outsource
• Own products
• Working with remote backend team
• Creating backends ourselves
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4. Situation
Remote team:
Mobile team <~> Backend team
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5. Situation
Remote team:
Mobile team <~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ > Backend team
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6. Situation
Remote team:
Mobile team <~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~ ocean ~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ > Backend team
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7. What we want from
backend?
• Use less requests
• Send only needed data in suitable
format
• Low latency
• Handle heavy computations
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8. What we do?
• Hey, let's change this request
• Hey, let's add this field
• Hey, let's get data in that format
• Hey, let's have public URL to pics
• Hey, let's ...
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9. What we usually
hear from backend
devs?
• No, I need yet another table to join
• No, it's not simple to add that field
• No, calculate it on your side
• No, our library can't do that
• No, I'll deploy these changes in next
sprint
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10. Problems
• Different goals
• Misunderstanding
• Lack of trust
• Limited experience
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11. Solutions?
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12. No solution
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13. Approaches
• Write documentation
• Write tests
• Write constructive emails
• Explain on examples
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14. API documentation
• Need time to write
• Need time to update
• Need time to search
• Useless if outdated
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15. API documentation
• 'Put everything in one place' (not in
emails, not in head)
• User friendly
• Access anywhere at any time
• Determined
• Always updated
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16. Creating API
documentation
• Auto generated docs from code
• API tests
• Wiki
• Google Doc
• Emails/skype history/developer's
head
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17. Documentation in Google Doc
• Easy to create (access anywhere)
• Easy to share
• Easy to update (ACL)
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18. Documentation in Google Doc
• Loooong & slow
• Not super-structured (as wiki)
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19. Must have: easy
navigation
Table of changes
• When
• Who
• What was changed (with links)
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20. Must have: easy
navigation
Table of changes
• When
• Who
• What was changed (with links)
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21. Must have: easy
navigation
Contents
• Quick to search
• Easy to deep into
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22. Must have:
fundamentals
Envinronment description
• Production server URL
• Dev server URL(s)
• Main accounts
• Version
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23. Must have:
fundamentals
Data formats
• JSON/xml
• Response should be valid!
• Encoding
• Timestamp format
• Boolean format
• Float format
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24. Must have:
fundamentals
Request formats
• GET
• POST (body format)
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25. Must have: headers
HTTP headers for Request
• Accept content-type
• Accept encoding
• Cookie
• Device
• App version
• Image scaling
• Session handling
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26. Must have: HTTP
codes
HTTP codes
• What are valid?
• What app should do?
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27. Must have:
response structure
Response structure
• Inner error code
• Error message to user
• Body
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28. Must have:
communication
with user
Inner error codes + message
• Ok
• Session is expired
• DB error
• Synchonization needed
• Just show message to user
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29. Must have in API
documentation
• Easy navigation and search:
• Table of changes
• Contents
• Fundamentals
• Envinronment description
• Data formats
• Request/response structure
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30. API tests
• Shared with backend dev
• Public results
• 'Everything is broken' - blame
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31. API tests. Helium
https://github.com/stanfy/helium
• DSL description
• Poke tests
• Scenarios tests
• Object generation
Making friends with backend developers. Stanfy MadCode Meetup, 2014. 31

32. Miscommunication
Be definite
• Discuss smth in emails/chat -> add to API doc
• Add manager to email thread
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33. Miscommunication
Provide full details
• Add headers
• Add timestamps
• Add session IDs
• Mark out details
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34. Explain
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35. Explain
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36. Miscommunication
Explain
• Backend developer is not iPhone/Android user
• Have no idea how data will shown
• Design driven vs DB-data driven
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37. Miscommunication
Be polite
• Thanks for quick changes
• Thanks for deploy
• Thanks for description
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38. Why we need this?
• We deal with real users
• We gather feedbacks
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39. Last slide
Helium
https://github.com/stanfy/helium
Google doc
http://bit.ly/1s69iVP
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40. Questions
@vixentael
avoitova@stanfy.com.ua
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41. Making friends with backend developers. Stanfy MadCode Meetup, 2014. 41