Parameters & Field Names
The Parameter & Field names section provides an overview of patterns for API request and response parameters and field names.
Data Types
Booleans
Boolean values are presented as true
and false
values. They will not be 1
or 0
nor will they be strings such as "true" and "false".
Date-times
All date-times are represented in UTC with precisely the following format: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.fffZ
where fff
is the first three decimals of the fractional seconds (i.e., millisecond precision).
API V2 accepts date-times in at least the following 12 formats:
YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.fffZ
YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ
YYYY-MM-DDThh:mmZ
- The above with
-00
,-0000
, or-00:00
instead of theZ
timezone identifier.
Times (no date portion)
All times are represented in UTC with precisely the following format: hh:mm:ss.fffZ
where fff
is the first three decimals of the fractional seconds (i.e., millisecond precision).
Durations
If a parameter represents a unit of time, then the unit name should be part of the field name so that the consumer knows what the value represents. For example, a retry timeout value would be named retry_timeout_secs
or retry_timeout_millis
.
Valid field suffixes are:
- millis
- secs
- hours
- days
- weeks
- months
- years
API V2 does not use ISO8601 time durations (e.g. P4Y
, PT0,42M
or P3Y6M4DT12H30M5.423S
).
Time zones
Time zone field names are always spelled as timezone
and the value is always the Time Zone Database area name spelled out as Europe/Berlin
, America/Chicago
for example.
Date Literals
User-friendly date ranges use this naming convention.
Date Literal | Range |
---|---|
yesterday | Starts 00:00:00 the day before and continues for 24 hours. |
today | Starts 00:00:00 of the current day and continues for 24 hours. |
tomorrow | Starts 00:00:00 after the current day and continues for 24 hours. |
last_week | Starts 00:00:00 on the first day of the week before the most recent first day of the week and continues for seven full days. |
this_week | Starts 00:00:00 on the most recent first day of the week before the current day and continues for seven full days. |
next_week | Starts 00:00:00 on the most recent first day of the week after the current day and continues for seven full days. |
last_month | Starts 00:00:00 on the first day of the month before the current day and continues for all the days of that month. |
this_month | Starts 00:00:00 on the first day of the month that the current day is in and continues for all the days of that month. |
next_month | Starts 00:00:00 on the first day of the month after the month that the current day is in and continues for all the days of that month. |
last_N_hours | For the number n provided, starts at 00 of the last hour and continues for the past n hours. |
next_N_hours | For the number n provided, starts at 00 of the next hour and continues for the next n hours. |
last_N_days | For the number n provided, starts 00:00:00 of the current day and continues for the past n days. |
next_N_days | For the number n provided, starts 00:00:00 of the current day and continues for the next n days. |
last_N_weeks | For the number n provided, starts 00:00:00 of the last day of the previous week and continues for the past n weeks. |
next_N_weeks | For the number n provided, starts 00:00:00 of the first day of the next week and continues for the next n weeks. |
HTTP Headers
Date-times in HTTP headers follow RFC-7231 §7.1.1.1's recommended "IMF-fixdate" format.
An example of the preferred format is
Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT ; IMF-fixdate
Naming Conventions
Enums and string literals
Enum and string literal parameters use snake case. If there is an acronym involved, there will not be an underscore between every letter.
For example, by_ani
instead ofByANI
, byAni
, or by_a_n_i
.
Country codes
The field name country_code
is always used to represent a country. It will be in ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 format in capital letters to represent the country. For example DE
for Germany.
Phone numbers
Phone numbers are always specified in e164 format. For example, +18005550199
.
If the country calling code needs to be represented in the API, the field name will always be country_calling_code
. If representing the actual country via its alpha 2 representation, country_code
will be used.
Ex: {"country_calling_code": "1", "country_code": "US"}
City names
City names are always called locality
and represented in title case. For example, New York City
instead of NEW YORK CITY
.
Address Format
Addresses are represented like this:
{
"street_address": "311 W Superior St",
"extended_address": "Suite 504",
"locality": "Chicago",
"administrative_area": "IL"
"country_code": "US",
"postal_code": "60654"
}
U.S. addresses
US states are always represented in their two-digit form in capital letters. For example, NY
for New York.
Pagination
The parameter which contains pagination is page
. This parameter is a map of pagination attributes.
Example
GET /phone_numbers?page[number]=3&page[size]=1 HTTP/1.1
The default number of items per page is 20; however, sometimes, this may not be appropriate.
Page numbering is 1-based and omitting the page
, or the page[number]
parameter will return the first page.
Generally speaking, the maximum allowable results will not be more than 250, although there may be some exceptions to this rule.
The total number of results is provided in the total_pages
field so that clients will know how many page options to display.
Example Response
HEADERS
Total-Pages:13
Response:
{
"meta": {
"total_pages": 13,
"total_results": 26,
"page_number": 3,
"page_size": 2
},
"data": [
{
"record_type": "phone_number",
"id": "4567890987",
"phone_number": "+18005550100",
"purchased_at": "2015-05-22T14:56:29.000Z",
...
},
{
"record_type": "phone_number",
"id": "44568890987",
"phone_number": "+18005550199",
"purchased_at": "2015-05-22T14:56:29.000Z",
...
}
]
}
Sorting
An endpoint may support requests to sort the primary data with a sort
query parameter.
Example
GET /connections?sort=name HTTP/1.1
Unless not appropriate, the default sort will be created_at DESC
An endpoint may also support multiple sort fields using the array syntax. Sort fields will be applied in the order specified.
Multiple Sort Fields
GET /connections?sort[]=name&sort[]=created_at HTTP/1.1
The sort order for each sort field will be ascending unless it is prefixed with a minus (U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS, "-"), in which case it will be descending.
GET /connections?sort[]=-created_at&sort[]=name HTTP/1.1
The above example should return the newest connections first. Any connections created on the same date will then be sorted by their name in ascending alphabetical order.
Filtering
Filtering of a resource collection based upon associations do so by allowing query parameters that combine the filter with the association name.
For example, the following is a request for all phone_numbers associated with a particular tag:
GET /phone_numbers?filter[tag]=tag_one HTTP/1.1
Filtering to values within an array can be achieved using query parameter array syntax:
GET /phone_numbers?filter[tag][]=tag_one&filter[tag][]=tag_two HTTP/1.1
Or an example using comments:
GET /comments?filter[tag]=tag_one,tag_two HTTP/1.1
Use the string null
to filter on resources that don't have a particular value set:
GET /comments?filter[author]=null HTTP/1.1
Filtering on values of nested or related objects
To denote that a filter applies to an attribute of a nested object, use the dot notation.
For example, the phone numbers endpoint returns data in this format:
{
"id": "d460a653-8ee6-4061-ae9a-5b8a52539fb4",
"phone_number": "18005550199",
"record_type": "phone_number",
...
"voice": {
"e911_address_id" : "",
"connection_name" : false,
"inbound_call_recording_channels" : "single",
...
}
}
To filter by the connection name the path and request would look like:
GET /phone_numbers?filter[voice.connection_name]=conn_one HTTP/1.1
Similarly by connection ID:
GET /regions?filter[voice.connection_id]=d460a653-8pp6-4061-ae9a-5b8a57339fb4 HTTP/1.1
However, if name
was a top-level key as in the below example:
{
"id": "d460a653-8pp6-4061-ae9a-5b8a57339fb4",
"name": "conn_one",
"record_type": "connection",
...
}
then the query would be:
GET /connections?filter[name]=conn_one HTTP/1.1
Complex filters
When filtering, you may need to specify more complex filters than equal to
.
Options are:
eq
ne
gt
gte
lt
lte
starts_with
ends_with
contains
Return phone numbers purchased before 2018-02-21:
GET /phone_numbers?filter[purchased_at][lt]=2018-02-21 HTTP/1.1
If using eq
then:
GET /phone_numbers?filter[purchased_at][eq]=2018-02-21 HTTP/1.1
and:
GET /phone_numbers?filter[purchased_at]=2018-02-21 HTTP/1.1
are equivalent.
To filter using string data use starts_with
, ends_with
or contains
:
GET /phone_numbers?filter[voice.connection_name][contains]=conn HTTP/1.1