Leveraging Uber Driver Services into your App – Why and How?

Last month, Uber released its official API to developers world-wide.

“Apps can pass a destination address to the Uber app, display pickup times, provide fare estimates, access trip history and more.”, the company said on its blog. To request a ride, the API will allow apps to send a destination address across to the Uber app; however, the ability to request rides from inside other apps is being released “in a more controlled fashion,” beginning with a select set of partners.

Uber also opened up an API Affiliate Program, where developers (US only) can earn Uber credits ($5/new rider) for themselves, and their users. And (more exciting) cash rewards were stated to be coming soon.

Top brands are already using the API. Starbucks, TripAdviser, Hyatt, Hinge, United Airlines, and OpenTable, to name a few.

For example, users can request a ride directly from OpenTable to their booked restaurant of choice; reserve a room with Hyatt and schedule an Uber ride to the hotel right from the reservations screen; and obtain ETAs for closest drivers and fare estimates to secure a reliable ride to your United flight.

Naturally, there are Terms around use of this API – specifically, exclusivity from integrating with any competing services – which isn’t much of a surprise, however read carefully before unintentionally blocking out integration points with other company APIs available or in the pipeline.

Developer Resources to Get Started:

• Uber Developer Tutorials and Documentation: https://developer.uber.com/
• Objective-C Uber API wrapper: https://github.com/sachinkesiraju/UberKit
• Python Example Application: https://github.com/uber/Python-Sample-Application