External

External type is designed for more complex data structure which might require the Producer to traverse through a categories tree (navigation) in order to narrow down data subset (data). These have the following attributes:

source	An object which specifies the location of the navigation and data feed. Note that only GET method is supported.
select	An object which controls what data selection mechanism is to be used.

select has these properties:

mode	Defines how data selection mechanism should be implemented. Supported modes: list one or more items from a list selected manually by Producer dropdown one item from a drop down selected manually by Producer
min	Minimum number of items that Producer can select from a list for list mode
max	Minimum and maximum number of items that Producer can select from a list for list mode
filtering	Controls data filtering mechanism. This works over keywords specified for data items and is supported only for list mode. Possible values: off no filtering supported freetext free text entry with autocomplete checkbox a checkbox for each keyword dropdown a dropdown of keywords

Filtering is not yet supported

Example

{
  "key": "podium",
  "type": "external",
  "source": {"url": "https://example.com/feeds/podium.json", "method": "get"},
  "select": {
    "mode": "list",
    "min": 2,
    "max": 2,
    "filtering": "off"
   }
}

Navigation

Navigation is a hierarchy of categories. At the bottom of the navigation tree there is a layer of data for that navigation tree branch. Hierarchy is optional.

Both hierarchy and data can be split between several feeds. This allows to partition feeds in a flexible way to meet size or architecture restrictions. This is done by providing categories-source or data-items-source attributes.

Navigation object has these properties:

categories-label	Dropdown labels for category selection.
categories	An array of categories entries, used to populate categories dropdown.
categories-source	Source object with an url pointing to JSON feed containing categories data array. This is ignored if categories is specified.
name	Name of a category as to be displayed in a dropdown.
data-items	An array of data entries.
data-items-source	Source object with a URL pointing to JSON feed containing data entries array. Ignored if data-items is specified.

Data

id	An arbitrary id which can be used for debug/data tracing purposes.
name	Name of this data item to be presented to the Producer.
data	Actual data
keywords	Array of keywords used for filtering.

Examples

Non-hierarchical data example

[
    {
      "id": "a1",
      "name": "Player 1 name",
      "data": "some data here",
      "keywords": [ "keyword1", "keyword2"]
    },
    {
      "id": "b2",
      "name": "Player 2 name",
      "data": "some data",
      "keywords": [ "keyword1", "keyword2"]
    }
]

Hierarchical structure example

The following feed describes this hierarchy:

1. First layer - discipline selection of “Hockey” and “Figure Skating”, labelled “Discipline”

2. Second layer for Hockey - event selection of “Men’s tournament” and “Women’s tournament”, labelled “Events”

3. Third layer for “Men’s tournament” - match selection of “Men’s Gold Medal Game” and “Men’s Bronze Medal Game”, labelled “Match”

4. Fourth layer for “Men’s Gold Medal Game” is the data layer. It lists two items of data.

{
  "categories-label": "Discipline",
  "categories": [
    {
      "name": "Hockey",
      "categories-label": "Event",
      "categories": [
        {
          "name": "Men's tournament",
          "categories-label": "Match",
          "categories": [
            {
              "name": "Men's Gold Medal Game",
              "data-items": [
                {
                  "id": "a1",
                  "name": "Player 1 name",
                  "data": "some data here",
                  "keywords": [ "keyword1", "keyword2"]
                },
                {
                  "id": "b2",
                  "name": "Player 2 name",
                  "data": "some data",
                  "keywords": [ "keyword1", "keyword2"]
                }
              ]
            },
            {
              "name": "Men's Bronze Medal Game",
              "data-items-source": {"url": "http://example.com/feeds/mbmg.json", "method": "get"}
            }
          ]
        },
        {
          "name": "Women's tournament",
          "categories-label": "Event",
          "categories-source": {"url": "http://example.com/feeds/wt.json", "method": "get"}
        }
      ]
    },
    { 
      "name": "Figure Skating",
      "label": "Events",
      "categories": {"url": "http://example.com/feeds/fs.json", "method": "get"}
    }
  ]
}

The categories data feed (http://example.com/feeds/wt.json\) might look like this:

[
    {
      "name": "Women's Gold Medal Game",
      "data-items": [
        {
          "id": "a1",
          "name": "Player 1 name",
          "data": "some data here",
          "keywords": [ "keyword1", "keyword2"]
        },
        {
          "id": "b2",
          "name": "Player 2 name",
          "data": "some data",
          "keywords": [ "keyword1", "keyword2"]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Women's Bronze Medal Game",
      "data-items-source": {"url": "http://example.com/feeds/wbmg.json", "method": "get"}
    }
]

The data feed (http://example.com/feeds/mbmg.json\) might look like this:

[
    {
      "id": "a1",
      "name": "Player 1 name",
      "data": "some data here",
      "keywords": [ "keyword1", "keyword2"]
    },
    {
      "id": "b2",
      "name": "Player 2 name",
      "data": "some data",
      "keywords": [ "keyword1", "keyword2"]
    }
]