Announcing Riders API 1.2 Featuring Upfront Fares, Ride Promotions and Improved Dev Docs

Today, we are launching support for upfront fares for all of our Riders API v1.2 endpoints. Upfront fares makes it clear for riders to know how much their trip will cost before they request. Upfront fares are now enabled in the API for Uber products that support upfront fares. With the move to upfront fares, the destination is now required and the fare for the trip must be shown to the user before the ride is requested. As part of this step forward, we are also announcing the availability of upfront fares in the Ride Request Widget.

Uber first introduced upfront fares two years ago when we launched uberPOOL. Riders entered their destinations so we could match them with other people headed the same way. This allowed us to calculate a fare in advance and show it to riders before they booked their ride. Now, when fares go up due to increased demand, riders are given the actual fare before they request their ride instead of surge lightning bolts and confirmation screens. There is no complicated math and no surprises, leading to a better user experience. Learn more about upfront fares in our Ride Requests best practices.

In support of our launch of upfront fares in the Riders API, we have drastically improved our Ride Requests tutorials and created tracks for our most popular languages. Implementing Ride Requests has never been easier. Get started today with Curl, Python, Java, iOS, Android, and follow our new best practices guide. We have also added official client libraries to our documentation to make it easy to get started in any programming language.

We are also introducing a new Ride Promotion Apply endpoint. Using Ride Promotions, developers can easily apply promo codes to a user’s profile using deep links and the new Ride Promotion Apply endpoint. Learn more about implementing the Ride Promotion Apply Endpoint.

Check out the new Trip Experiences documentation to deliver unique experiences to riders when they are on a trip. Our new guides on webhooks and tips for implementing Trip Experiences will make it easier for developers to build interesting trip experiences that resonate with Riders.

With the introduction of the Riders API v1.2, we are removing support for rate-limiting headers. In the next few months, we will introduce a new endpoint to query for real-time rate-limiting status for a given endpoint. We are also working on being more proactive with developers that approach the rate limits. Once an application starts to approach the rate limit, our Developer Platform team will reach out to understand the use case and make sure developers have the capacity to be successful. Find out more in the Rate Limiting guide.

We will follow up with detailed deprecation plans and the official end of life date for the Riders API 1.0 + 1.1 endpoints in Q1. We plan to deprecate the 1.0 + 1.1 endpoints by Q3 2017 and will work with the community to ensure a seamless migration to v1.2. Developers working on an integration today should start by using the Riders API v1.2.

Our hope is that these updates will provide developers the tools they need to build even more powerful and creative moving experiences. We’ll continue to add more features and refinements as time goes on and can’t wait to see what the community will come up with next!

Join the Uber developer community and get started building moving experiences at developers.uber.com.

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