Copy2Contact API Developer Features

We've built in some flexibility and a few extra features to make developing with the Copy2Contact API easier.

Account Emulation

There are a few different account plans available and choosing the right one might not be an obvious consideration. In addition, making your application work gracefully when a rate limit is hit can be a challenge with an unlimited developer account.

REST: When working with the REST API, developer accounts can use the emu parameter to emulate the rate limit settings of a paid account. Set this parameter to basic, pro, comm, or ent to emulate rate limit settings of these account levels.

SOAP: When working with the SOAP API, developer accounts can use the ParseContactDev and ParseEventDev methods, which take rateLimit, rateWindow, and monthLimit parameters to emulate the rate limit settings of a paid account. Set these parameters to match the rate limit settings of Basic, Pro, Commercial, or Enterprise account levels.

Data Overrides

Because developer accounts return data that is partially and randomly obscured, it can be difficult to test your application consistently. For example, if you use a contact's email address as a key into a database, you can override the output of the ParseContact method so that the same database entry is keyed each time.

ParseContact supports the following optional overrides:

overrideEmail - Set this to force the ContactEmail element to the given value.
overrideName - Set this to force the ContactName element to the given value.
overrideFirst - Set this to force the ContactFirst element to the given value.

ParseEvent supports the following optional overrides:

overrideFrom - Set this to force the EventFrom element to the given value.
overrideTo - Set this to force the EventTo element to the given value.

JSON Callback Function (REST Only)

Many JSON applications can benefit from a callback function when <script> tags are used. When the cbfn parameter is specified, the API will return data with the application/javascript content type instead of application/json. The returned JSON data will be enclosed in a call to the given function name, making a complete javascript statement. For example:

callbackfunction({"result":{"ContactScore":"0","EventScore":"36"}});

Be sure to prevent exposure of your API AuthID and Password to casual snooping by not including them in the <script> tag explicitly. The src attribute of the tag should point to your server, not ours.

XML Content Type (REST Only)

The jury is still out on which Content Type is appriopriate for XML data served by a web service. Some plaforms insist on one type, while others insist on the other. When the xmltype parameter is set to text, the API will return content type text/xml instead of application/xml.