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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 the Z 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 LiteralRange
yesterdayStarts 00:00:00 the day before and continues for 24 hours.
todayStarts 00:00:00 of the current day and continues for 24 hours.
tomorrowStarts 00:00:00 after the current day and continues for 24 hours.
last_weekStarts 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_weekStarts 00:00:00 on the most recent first day of the week before the current day and continues for seven full days.
next_weekStarts 00:00:00 on the most recent first day of the week after the current day and continues for seven full days.
last_monthStarts 00:00:00 on the first day of the month before the current day and continues for all the days of that month.
this_monthStarts 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_monthStarts 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_hoursFor the number n provided, starts at 00 of the last hour and continues for the past n hours.
next_N_hoursFor the number n provided, starts at 00 of the next hour and continues for the next n hours.
last_N_daysFor the number n provided, starts 00:00:00 of the current day and continues for the past n days.
next_N_daysFor the number n provided, starts 00:00:00 of the current day and continues for the next n days.
last_N_weeksFor 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_weeksFor 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

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