scideas
software
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scideas software data integration

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Getting your platforms talking

Many of the projects in our portfolio connect different online platforms to which the client is subscribed or connect a third-party platform to their own site. For example many site owners use Thrivecart to sell products and chartmogul to visualise cash-flow and customer relationships. Sometimes a client can integrate data themselves using tools provided by the platform but where these are unavailable or too restricted scideas software can step in and get your data moving.

Integration technology

Online platforms usually provide either one or both of the two main data integration tools.

API

An api (application programming interface) is a controlled way for a platform to offer to share it's data. This is a consumable item; a platform must implement an api itself, a developer cannot create an api to grab data from an unwitting host. An api request is made using code on one server to get data from another server. This is often referred to as a pull. Typically an api request requires an account key and may require specific HTTP connection configuration.

Webhook

A webhook is essentially the counterpart to an api. Instead of code that makes a request for data from another server, a webhook is an HTTP request made by the remote server to your own server. Your own server needs code to listen for the webhook and parse any data sent. Because the data is sent from the remote server when it decides to, typically when some event occurs, this is often called a push.

If both webhooks and an api are available a continuous, two-way exchange of data is possible between your server and the platform.



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