This topic provides an overview of Alibaba Cloud SDKs. This topic describes in detail the core features, supported programming languages, and types of Alibaba Cloud SDKs to help developers use Alibaba Cloud SDKs in a more convenient and efficient manner.
What are Alibaba Cloud SDKs?
Alibaba Cloud SDKs are encapsulated application dependency packages that are used to call API operations of Alibaba Cloud services. Alibaba Cloud provides SDKs that support multiple programming languages and development frameworks, such as Java, Python, Node.js, and Go. This facilitates developers to build applications related to Alibaba Cloud services.
For information about API operations, see Overview.
Types
Alibaba Cloud provides SDKs for you to call the API operations of Alibaba Cloud services. Alibaba Cloud SDKs can be divided into the following two types:
The cloud service SDKs that are provided by Alibaba Cloud OpenAPI Portal. SDKs in multiple languages can be automatically generated. Examples: SDKs of Elastic Compute Service (ECS), ApsaraDB RDS, and networking services.
The self-developed SDKs of cloud services that use self-managed API gateways. Examples: SDKs of Object Storage Service (OSS), Simple Log Service, and Tablestore.
Note: Due to the nature of specific cloud services, this topic does not involve self-developed SDKs that are used for feature integration, such as the Queen SDK provided by ApsaraVideo Live, the SDK for one-click logon provided by Phone Number Verification Service, and the terminal client developed based on ApsaraDB for Redis.
SDKs automatically generated by OpenAPI Portal
SDKs of this type free you from considering the implementation details of API operations, and standardize the identity, authentication, and signing rules. SDKs in multiple programming languages can be automatically generated. You do not need to develop SDKs based on the cloud services.
How to identify SDKs of this type
Read the API reference of the Alibaba Cloud service that you want to use. If the debugging button that redirects you to OpenAPI Portal for debugging appears in the API reference, the API operations of this service are registered in OpenAPI Portal. In this case, SDKs of this service can be automatically generated in OpenAPI Portal.
Read the documentation of the Alibaba Cloud service that you want to use, such as Use OpenAPI and Integration overview.
Self-developed SDKs of services that use self-managed gateways
Services that use self-managed gateways provide API operations for service management and data usage. OpenAPI Portal fails to support API requests with ultra-high queries per second (QPS) or meet customization requirements. Therefore, self-managed gateways and self-developed SDKs are used to call API operations of specific cloud services.
How to identify SDKs of this type
Read the SDK reference of the Alibaba Cloud service that you want to use.
Notes
A minority of Alibaba Cloud services use self-managed gateways and self-developed SDKs, and the SDKs are considerably different. You can use self-developed SDKs based on your business requirements. For more information, see the documentation of the corresponding Alibaba Cloud services. Subsequent sections will describe the technologies and integration of SDKs that are automatically generated in OpenAPI Portal.