Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Authentication
• Responses
• Reference Data
• Localization
• Querying
• Paging
• Batching
• Method Usage Limit
• Terminology
• Error and Context Codes

Introduction

The Ding API is a Level 0 REST web service. We have used the swagger standard to describe this service. As a result, we are able to provide an interactive documentation page, which lists all the methods and even allows you to interact with API, showing the request bodies and responses that you will receive from the API.

To generate an API Key, you should go to the Developer tab which can be found in the Account Settings section of your DingConnect account.

Enter the API Key into the token input box on top-right of the Methods page Methods and click the button. Then browse the API definition and interact with the API from that page. Using this interface you can figure out the headers, request bodies and responses that your software will need to send to interact with the API.

The swagger definition can also be used to automatically generate client SDK libraries in many different languages. Many free and commercial code generators are available that can consume this swagger definition and generate client code for you, allowing you to rapidly develop your application. For example, you can import our swagger definition into the online service provided at http://editor.swagger.io and from that interface you can generate client code in over 20 different programming languages.

The URL for our swagger definition is in the URL text box on the Methods page and ends with /swagger/docs/v1.

Authentication

All requests to the API must be authenticated. Any exceptions to this rule are documented in the individual API methods.

The client must include an HTTP header api_key using the API key that was issued to you.

If authentication fails, you will receive a HTTP 401 response.

You can test your credentials in this Swagger UI client by entering them in the token input field on the Methods page and clicking the button. You can then use the Try it out button in each API method that requires authentication.

Responses

All requests and responses are formatted using the JSON interchange format https://www.json.org/. Parsers are available for all modern programming and scripting languages and are generally very easy to use. This format was chosen because it allows us to add new fields to our responses and to evolve our API over time without breaking conforming parsers.

You should not attempt to manually parse responses using regular expressions as extra fields can be added over time and there is every chance that the ordering of fields may change over time due to 3rd party framework and library upgrades. However a conforming parser will seamlessly handle these changes and your integration with our API will not break.

Every API response will contain a high level integer result code that broadly indicates the success, failure or otherwise of the actual call.

These are the top level ResultCode values that you can receive:

ResultCode	HTTP Status	Meaning	Description
1	200	Success.	The API call was processed successfully
2	200	Success With Warning.	The API call was processed successfully, but there was a warning. Use the ErrorCodes for further details on the warning.
3	503/429	Transient Error.	The API call failed because of some transient error. The request can be retried later. You can retry but should contact Ding if the error persists. There will be a Retry-After HTTP header indicating when to retry the request.
4	400/401	Client Error.	The submitted request contained bad parameters. Do not retry with the same parameters. The caller must fix the input parameters before retrying.
5	500	Server Error.	The parameters for the request are correct, but the server was unable to process them. Do not retry with the same parameters. You must contact Ding to resolve the situation.

In cases where the response does not succeed, the ErrorCodes array will contain one or more string error codes that indicate why the request failed.

You can use the GetErrorCodeDescriptions API call to get human readable error messages for each string in the ErrorCodes array.

Note that the top level set of ResultCode values will never change. However, we will continue to add more ErrorCodes on an ongoing basis. It would be dangerous to assume that the list of possible error codes will not change.

A full list of codes is listed below in the Error and Context Codes section below

Reference Data

The API tries to minimize the amount of data returned in each call. To do this, we use codes as much as possible. For example, we use standard country & currency ISO codes. We also have our own codes for Products and Providers.

There are API calls for retrieving the list of items and their code.

GetProviders will contain a list of Provider objects which, in turn, will contain its ProviderCode.

This code is then used in the definition of a Product.

Then GetProducts will contain a list of objects that each have a SkuCode.

This SkuCode is used in SendTransfer.

The idea with the various Get methods is that you should be able to cache the results in your application and you will rarely need to call them again. This kind of caching will greatly speed up the performance of your application by avoiding repeated, unnecessary calls to the server. But your application should not cache forever: instead it should honor the Cache-Control headers that are returned in the HTTP response headers. Many programming languages already have libraries that can interpret these headers correctly and we recommend their use.

Localization

In addition to reference data codes, we try to separate language-specific descriptions from the objects to which they apply. In some cases a description can be quite long and it may perhaps contain formatting information.

Products can have long descriptions.

Promotions can have detailed terms and conditions.

Each of these textual descriptions can be for multiple languages.

Each item that can be localized will have a LocalizationKey property. This localization key is used to find the full text appropriate to that object in the corresponding item Descriptions API call.

GetProductDescriptions is used to lookup localizations for products.

GetPromotionDescriptions is used with promotions.

Localizations will be returned in multiple languages. There will always be English (en) translations. Not all items will have translations in all languages, so when filtering by languageCode you should always request the en language as well as the intended target language.

Note that large blocks of text should be parsed as CommonMark. This will allow you to apply your own styling.

Again, the localization data is highly cacheable and you should load the localizations for your languages at intervals. Again, please pay attention to the cache control headers and refresh your cache when appropriate.

Querying

Many of the APIs return lists of items that can be filtered using parameters. For optimal usage, you should understand how parameters in the same request interact.

For all APIs, submitting no filter parameters will mean that all items will be returned.

Almost all filter parameters are arrays. This means that you can submit multiple values for the given parameter and the API will find items that have any of those values. In database terms, for a particular named parameter, all values provided are OR'd.

For the GetProducts API, you could submit countryIsos of [JM,HT]

The API method will return all products that have a countryIso of HT or JM.

It is possible to submit values for different named parameters in combination. The API will try to find items that satisfy all of those combinations. In database terms, with different named parameters the values are ANDed.

For the GetProducts API, you could submit countryIsos of [JM] and a benefits value of [Data].

The API method will return products that have both a country of JM and the Data benefit.

You can combine this effect in a powerful way by combining multiple values for different named parameters.

For the GetProducts API, you could submit countryIsos of [JM,HT] and benefits of [Data,Utility].

This would return all products that have Data or Utility benefits in Jamaica or Haiti.

Paging

In some of our API methods the number of items returned are bounded.

There are a limited number of countries and currencies in the world and we don't mind giving you that entire list.

However in some of our APIs the number of items returned could be unbounded and may return many items.

The number of transfers that you have done last month could number in the thousands.

For unbounded lists, we will not return the entire list. Instead we will return pages of data and you must request each page.

With unbounded lists, you can use Skip and Take parameters to indicate how many records to skip from the beginning of the list and how many items to take.

Skip=0 will skip no items in the list, and so represents the start of the list.

Skip=10 will skip ten items and so the eleventh item will be the first one returned.

Skip=0, Take=10 will start at the beginning of the list and return 10 items.

Skip=10, Take=10 will skip the first 10 items and return the next 10 items. This would be items 11-20

In this manner you can page through data. The API indicates when there are more items available by setting ThereAreMoreItems=true. When this property is false, then there is no more data. If you fetch another page, it will be empty.

Note that Take has a maximum of 100 and we will only allow you to Skip a maximum of 500 records. This allows a maximum of 600 records to be retrieved.

Batching

Some of our API methods support batching. This is the ability to submit multiple input items where each input item is processed individually. Each input item can succeed or fail independently and so the response needs to be able to report on the success or failure of each one.

Each batch request will contain an array of input items that are POSTed in the body of the request. Each of these items must contain a string BatchItemRef property that will uniquely identify the item within the overall request.

The response will contain a list of items, each of which will contain individual BatchItemRef, ResultCode and ErrorCodes properties as well as any other properties that are relevant to the particular method you called.

The BatchItemRef is the unique code you submitted in the input item. The ResultCode and ErrorCodes are the result and errors for that particular input item. If the ResultCode is success (see Responses above), then other properties in the result item will be populated. If the ResultCode is not success, then you should process the ErrorCodes array for this input item.

In this way, we can report on the success or failure of individual input items.

It is important to realize that, just like other API methods, there is still an overall success or failure for the overall request. If the overall request has failed, then none of the individual input items will have been processed. Only if the overall request has succeeded should the individual items be considered. Note that it is entirely possible for the overall request to succeed, even if all the input items failed.

Please note that the ordering of the items in the response list is not guaranteed to be in the same order as you submitted.

Method usage limit

Please note that for every successful SendTransfer the limits for each method will be reset to their original value.

Method	Requests/10 minutes
get /api/V1/GetErrorCodeDescriptions	20
get /api/V1/GetCurrencies	20
get /api/V1/GetRegions	20
get /api/V1/GetCountries	20
get /api/V1/GetProviders	50
get /api/V1/GetProviderStatus	50
get /api/V1/GetProducts	50
get /api/V1/GetProductDescriptions	50
post /api/V1/SendTransfer	Unlimited
post /api/V1/EstimatePrices	50
get /api/V1/GetBalance	50
get /api/V1/GetPromotions	50
get /api/V1/GetPromotionDescriptions	50
post /api/V1/ListTransferRecords	50
post /api/V1/CancelTransfers	50
get /api/V1/GetAccountLookup	50

Terminology

• Product-- An item that can be purchased and sent to an account number. Each product has a minimum and maximum price range and an identifying SkuCode.
• Provider-- An organization that products can be purchased from. Providers trade in a single country and are assigned a unique ProviderCode. Providers can have an identical ShortName in different countries, but they are legally different entities. Many of our providers are mobile phone operators.
• Region-- Each country can have a number of smaller regions. A provider may only service a subset of regions. A product may only be valid for a subset of regions.
• Account Number-- This number identifies the account with the provider that will benefit from the purchase of the product. This is most typically a phone number, but not always. For some products and providers, this may not be numeric (it could be an e-mail address or a subscriber identifier).
• Benefit-- Each product can convey a number of benefits on an account number, including mobile phone credit, data, bundles, sms, long distance credit, and so forth.
• Transfer-- The purchase of a product, often described as a "top up" or a "recharge". Sending a transfer to an account number asks that the provider confer all of the benefits of a particular product to a specific account number.

Error and Context Codes

This is the current set of possible error codes and their descriptions. In some cases the context will contain an additional code and that is explained here.

ResultCode	ErrorCode	Description	Context
2	NearestMatch	The submitted request could not be fulfilled exactly, so the system returned the nearest valid result. The context code will indicate why the request could not be fulfilled as submitted.	Code Description ProviderCannotSupplyRequestReceiveValue An EstimatePrices request was submitted with a receive value, that the provider cannot supply. For example some providers may only be able to process whole amounts and a decimal receive value was submitted. The estimated price that was returned is for the nearest whole value.
3	RateLimited	Too many simultaneous requests were attempted. Please back off your request rate. Can also occur if a fraud rule is breached for an account number.
	TransientProviderError	A temporary error occurred with the provider. Please try again later. If this persists, please contact support.	Code Description ProviderTimedOut Communication timeout with the provider. Please try again later. If this persists, please contact support. ProviderRefusedRequest The provider refused the request. This may be transient, but could be because the target account is not eligible for the chosen product.
4	AccountNumberInvalid	The submitted AccountNumber parameter failed validation.	Code Description ProviderRefusedRequest The provider refused the request. This may be transient, but could be because the target account is not eligible for the chosen product. AccountNumberFailedRegex The format of the account number failed regex validation. Please ensure the account number validates against the regex before submitting.
	AuthenticationFailed	Invalid or missing authentication credentials.
	BatchItemRefMustBeUnique	A duplicate BatchItemRef was used when submitting requests to a batch method.
	ParameterCombinationInvalid	The combination of parameters submitted to the method are not permitted.	A comma-separated list of parameter names
	ParameterInvalid	One or more request parameters were invalid.	A comma-separated list of parameter names
	ParameterMissing	One or more request parameters were missing.	A comma-separated list of parameter names
	ParameterOutOfRange	One or more request parameters contained values that were outside the permitted range.	A comma-separated list of parameter names
	RequestInvalid	The request was invalid. Please consult the method documentation for correct parameter format.	Code Description MultipleRecordsMatched This context code can occur during the Cancel API and indicates that you submitted parameters that matched more than one transfer record and we did not know which one to cancel. InstantTransfersCannotBeCancelled An attempt was made to cancel instant transfers. Only batch transfers can be cancelled. NoRecordsFound No records were found that could be cancelled.
	TooManyParameters	One or more request parameters were submitted with too many values.	A comma-separated list of parameter names
5	InsufficientBalance	There is insufficient distributor balance available to service this request. Please contact finance.
	OtherError	The request failed due to an unclassified reason.
	ProviderError	An error occured with the provider.	Code Description ProviderUnknownError An unknown error occured while communicating with the provider. ProviderRefusedRequest The provider refused the request. This may be transient, but could be because the target account is not eligible for the chosen product.