API Details
On this page you will find some technical details of the Dizions API that works with the system. This enables you to interact with your data without having to log in to the web interface. It is a RESTful API using JSON over https. For prices, please call the office.
Contents
Authentication
The API grants access based on three headers:
- Source. Identifies the 3rd party software provider
- Org. Identifies the charity or company
- User. Identifies the user within the charity or company. This controls branch, project and field visibility, as if the user were using the web interface.
Groups
The API is based around a range of groups that map to various entities.
- clients (organisations that are "people")
- referrals (diary)
- done_contacts (completed actions)
- due_contacts (outstanding actions)
- workers (support workers)
- schedules (job cards)
- external_referrals (referrals collected externally, e.g. a self-referral form on your website )
An example URL would look like (GET) https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/clients
Filters
If you want to filter your results, you can keep adding up to 10 key/value pairs to the URL. The value can usually take multiple values separated by a ;.
The example below would get all clients that have a religion (org_religion) ID of 1,3 or 10 and an ethnicity (org_ethnic_group) ID of 1.
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/clients/religion/1;3;10/ethnicity/1
Here's another example. You would see completed actions for project ID 5, where the client was unemployed and registered disabled.
You can also filter by the record ID (getting a single record)
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/referrals/id/510.
For referrals and clients you can actually filter by single record extension database value(s).
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/clients/website_photo_consent/109
For referrals, contacts and schedules you can restrict the results to a date range.
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/referrals/date_active/2018-10-01,2018-10-31
Selecting Specific Fields
When you hit an endpoint, a range of default fields are automatically returned. If you want something that isn't default, or you want to return less data to speed things up, you can pick the fields to be returned. In the case of referrals or clients you can also return any single record extension databases. Use /field/ with semicolon separated field names to choose the fields you want to return.
'[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/clients/field/id;surname;website_photo_consent
The API can tell you which fields are available by appending /selectable_fields to the group.
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/clients/selectable_fields
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/workers/selectable_fields
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/referrals/selectable_fields
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/due_contacts/selectable_fields
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/done_contacts/selectable_fields
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/schedules/selectable_fields
Creating Records
To create a record you need to do a [PUT] request, with fields in the body. Many of these will have a selection of mandatory fields.
Create a client:
[PUT] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/clients
Create a client by an external ID (e.g a reference to the client in another system):
[PUT] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/clients/external_id/EXTERNAL_ID
Create a referral (Record a Contact):
[PUT] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/referrals
Create a due contact (incomplete action) for a referral:
[PUT] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/due_contacts/referral/REFERRAL_ID
Updating Records
To update records you need to use the [POST] method, with fields in the body. There will be some mandatory fields and some fields that need a value if present.
Update a client:
[POST] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/clients/id/CLIENT_ID
Update a referral:
[POST] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/referrals/id/REFERRAL_ID
Update due contact
[POST] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/due_contacts/id/CONTACT_ID
Update done contact, or complete due contact (complete by completing the start_date and end_date in the body)
[POST] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/done_contacts/id/CONTACT_ID
File Uploads
You can upload files against clients and referrals, these can only be uploaded to Amazon S3.
[POST] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/clients/id/CLIENT_ID/uploads
[POST] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/referrals/id/REFERRAL_ID/uploads
In the body you'll need the files along with user_visibility and group_visibility settings which are IDs (comma separated if there's more than one)
Single Record Extension Databases
As mentioned previously, for referrals and clients you can select single record extension database data, or filter by these values. To expose these fields to the API you need to edit that field in the front end, setting Allow collaborator API access? to Yes and choosing a suitable Name to share with collaborators. You can then reference that extension database field by the collaborator name.
Multiple Record Extension Databases [GET]
Multiple record extension databases work as their own entity. They can be accessed in the API by a combination of their name and ID. Convert the name to lowercase, and replace spaces with underscores. Then separate the name and ID with an underscore. For example, this end point that gets all records for extension database 13, called Staff Disciplinary:
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/extension_database/staff_disciplinary_13
You can also specify which fields you want to select, to make things more efficient. Extension database records can be filtered in the same way as other requests, to get all results for a particular referral you can do this:
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/extension_database/wellcheck_notes_9/referral/2289
Multiple Record Extension Databases [PUT]
To create a new record you need to do a [PUT] request.
[PUT] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/extension_database/staff_disciplinary_13
Then add the body:
referral 2289
date_43 2018-11-08
The ID of the new record will be returned.
Multiple Record Extension Databases [POST]
To update a record you also need to supply the ID:
[POST] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/extension_database/wellcheck_notes_9/id/17 Then add the POST body in the same way as a PUT request.
Reports
Reporting is based on dimensions and metrics, conceptually similar to an X and Y axis, although metrics are optional. If you pass in a dimension against a group, you will get a breakdown of the number of records in that group. For examplem, this will show you how many clients there are in each district:
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/clients/dimension/district
If you want this further broken down by gender:
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/clients/dimension/district/metric/gender
You can also filter the results in the same way as other [GET] requests:
To view a user's completed contacts by day for a range of time, you can do this:
Dictionaries
Many of the values returned by the API are IDs, so there's a selection of dictionaries to get the friendly names. As a (slow and heavy) reference you can get all datadict dictionaries:
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/dictionary (not suggested for general use)
If the dictionary is set up in datadict you can access via api_group/table_reference. The end points below will return the full list of IDs and friendly names.
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/dictionary/organisations/district
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/dictionary/referrals/project
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/dictionary/contacts/contact_type
You can also search for items in the dictionary:
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/dictionary/search/referrals/project/SEARCH_TERM
[GET] https://api.dizions.co.uk/v2/dictionary/search/referrals/referrer/SEARCH_TERM
