For the sake of consistency and ease of consuming its endpoints, usage of common field names is recommended.
Common Fields
name
: A title for the resource (e.g. a discussion’s title).body
: The primary text content of a resource (e.g. a comment’s text).format
: Field specifying what format body is in.insertUserID
: Unique numeric ID of the user who created this resource.dateInserted
: Full datetime the resource was created.insertIPAddress
: IP address associated with the user who created this resource, at the time it was created.updateUserID
: Unique numeric ID of the user who last updated this resource.dateUpdated
: Full datetime the resource was last updated.updateIPAddress
: IP address associated with the user who last updated this resource, at the time the update was made.key
: A unique string identifier for a resource (e.g. “urlCode”).status
: An indicator for the condition of a resource (e.g. “state”).
If a resource has a field that is analogous to a common field, it should populate that field with its value. For example, if a row has a text
field and no body
field, and the purpose is the same, a body
field should be added with the contents of text
. This would be done so the data is easily consumed. No further modification of the rows is necessary. Various fields, unique to each resource type, remain in the row as part of the full dataset.
Multi-Resource Responses
API endpoints returning datasets containing different types of resources (e.g. search) will need to include two additional fields for each row.
recordType
: The type of resource (e.g. discussion).recordID
: The unique ID of the resource row (e.g. a discussion’s numerical ID).
The unique ID field for a row should not be removed when recordID
is added. For example, commentID
and recordID
are valid on a single row, simultaneously.