Vonage Communications APIs are enabling developers to connect people. Through the Community Member Spotlight series, we want to appreciate and highlight some of these members of our developer community.

For our first Community Member Spotlight, we caught up with Kiran Krishnan, an open-source enthusiast from Kerala, India. We want to recognize Kiran for his awesome job integrating Vonage into Supabase.

Follow Kiran on Twitter or GitHub.

Please Introduce Yourself

I majored in computer science and had been part of a small startup for the last six years before I joined BoxyHQ and entered the open-source ecosystem. I've been more active on open source for the past few months. During this time, I've been working on several open-source projects, including Supabase, SAML Jackson, and Gotrue, to name a few.

I love learning new frameworks/languages and writing technical blog posts in my free time. I also enjoy building open-source products and tools.

What Do You Do in Your Job?

I'm currently working as a software engineer at BoxyHQ, and it's one of the most incredible opportunities I've ever had. My day-to-day work involves coding in JavaScript, writing tests, and occasionally writing documentation and articles.

BoxyHQ is an open-source company that helps startups enable enterprise features in any SaaS app with just a few lines of code. Integrate SAML SSO, Directory Sync, Audit Logs, and Privacy Vault in minutes. Open source and free

How Long Have You Been in Programming/Tech?

I've been programming for about 8+ years now. I started as a PHP web developer in early 2013 and have been programming since then. Along the way, I've worked with various technologies and languages.

How Did You First Learn to Code?

I learned to code by myself during my college years. I was learning to code in Java, C, and C++ at that time and mostly learning from books.

Mac or PC?

I prefer to use my MacBook Pro.

What Have You Built With Vonage APIs?

I've used the Vonage SMS and Messages API to send SMS to users in different scenarios and also developed some WhatsApp chatbots using the WhatsApp Business API. It was a fun and new experience working with those APIs. Vonage APIs are just about the easiest thing I've ever used. It's one of the reasons why I recommend Vonage to anyone for SMS and Voice.

Which Tech Stack Did You Use?

I've integrated Vonage APIs into both JavaScript and Golang code. I mostly use the following tech stack for my projects: Next.js, Golang, Tailwind CSS, PostgreSQL, React, TypeScript, and Prisma. I'm also learning and using other technologies like GraphQL, Remix.run, and more.

How Did You End up Integrating Vonage Into Supabase?

I noticed some Supabase customers were asking for Vonage SMS to authenticate their users with SMS-based authentication. I found this was an excellent opportunity to get involved in a popular open-source project and learn more about it.

I messaged the CEO of Supabase through Twitter and asked if I could help them with the integration of Vonage SMS into Supabase. He said you could go ahead and do that, but I wanted to ensure I was clear on the process.

Without previous experience with Go and Gotrue, I thought it would be hard to understand the source code and contribute to such a large project. I learned the basics of Go in the following weeks and set up supabase/gotrue locally on my machine.

It took roughly 6 hours to understand the code and finish the Vonage SMS API integration. My previous experience with authentication libraries and APIs helped me to understand the code much faster than I initially anticipated.

So I made a PR in just a few days, and PR merged into the project successfully after a few days of testing and feedback from the team. Here is the link to the PR.

What Resources Helped You Along the Way?

Vonage API documentation and examples helped me along the way. As a result, I was able to understand the API quickly and was able to implement it in my code. Vonage also provided many resources to help the developers understand the API and how to implement it in their projects.

Any New Developments in Tech You Are Especially Excited About?

As a JavaScript developer, I'm excited to see the new frameworks and tools coming out to make the developers' lives easier. For example, I'm excited about how TypeScript is becoming a standard for the JavaScript community and how it will help us write better code.

Another thing I'm excited about is the new version of the Next.js framework and how it evolves the way we build React-based apps. Finally, Remix.run is another excellent JavaScript framework I will learn and potentially use in future projects.

Any Coding Articles You Want Our Audience to Know About?

You can read my "How to send an SMS with Golang using Vonage SMS API" post. Or check out my PR where I integrated Vonage into Supabase.

What's Next For You?

I'm eager to learn about new technologies and ways to solve problems. In addition, I want to spend more time contributing to the open-source community in the coming years and be a part of the community that makes the world a better place.

Anything Else You’d Like to Share?

With open-source software, anyone has the right to solve problems and create the finest products. Therefore, I hope more open-source companies will be born in the coming years, making the ecosystem even bigger.

I see more developers coming to open source these days, so I expect to see more of them join the community soon. Contributing to open-source projects will bring more opportunities than you can imagine.

Thanks to Vonage for allowing me to share my knowledge working with open-source software.

Connect With the Vonage Developer Community

Meet more developers like Kiran on our Vonage Community Slack. Stay up to date with the latest Vonage Developer news on Twitter.