Getting Started

Owned by Steve Maher
Last updated: Mar 07, 2022
2 min read

Introduction

Welcome to Data Makes the Difference's (DMTD) Content Server REST API.  This API provides for the ability to embed DMTD's guides and protocols into your applications.

To get started, DMTD should have provided you with a bearer token, which is used to authenticate all REST API requests.  If you have not yet received your token, please contact us to obtain one.

28-June-2021 - A breaking change has been made to the REST APIs in that the user controller has been completely removed. All X-User headers are no longer needed and all purchases/learners are directly associated with bearer token’s account as opposed to being associated with alternative users.

Creating Learners

For each learner that wants to use a DMTD product a learner record must be created via the /1/learner - POST API.

You may choose to save the id that we return to you, or assign your own id to the code field.  The code that you provide may be specified via the X-LearnerCode HTTP header specification to REST calls that require a user to be specified.

Making Purchases

Once a the learner has been created, a purchase for an assessment must be recorded for the learner.  This is accomplished via the /1/purchase - POST API.

Using the Guide

The various guides that are available from our system are accessed via /1/guide - GET API.  This API returns the entire guide that you may cache in your application.  It is recommended that this cache be invalidated once per day to ensure that you always have our latest updates.

The guide returns a hierarchical structure:

  • Chapters

    • Sections

Using the Protocol

Protocol Index

To begin using the protocol, the index should be retrieved via /1/protocol - GET - Index.  This API returns the entire protocol index that you may cache in your application.  It is recommended that this cache be invalidated once per day to ensure that you always have our latest updates.

The index provides a standardized hierarchal structure to handle the assessment protocol as follows:

  • areas

    • groups

      • questions

Each node in this tree provides metadata about that particular node (e.g. area/group/question identifiers).  This information is then handed to the /1/protocol - GET - Query API to retrieve the protocol content that can be displayed to the user.

Protocol Content

Protocol content retrieval is tied to an individual learner.  Thus, the learner's owner must have an active license assigned to the learner or the request will result with an unauthorized error.


HTML Text

All text fields may contain HTML.  This saves you the work of having to style the guide and protocol pieces by hand.

A Cascading Style Sheet for the styles used can be found at:  https://s3.amazonaws.com/vbmappapp/assets/vbmapp.css