Markit On Demand - Data APIs

Introduction

As part of its custom web hosting business, Markit On Demand, Inc sometimes provides web service APIs for it clients to use. The details of each service vary depending on the needs of each client and project, but they generally follow a similar format. The services can return data in either XML or JSON format, with an optional JSON-P wrapper. The data returned will be the same regardless of the format requested.

The following is a list of the service methods provided by this API.

• Lookup
• Quote
• Timeseries
• Interactive

General Format

Markit On Demand web services typically follow the "REST" model for web services. In simple terms, REST is a formal description of the HTTP protocol. Accessing a "REST" web service, therefore is merely a matter of making a standard HTTP request to a defined resource.

In some cases a SOAP Web Service API will be provided in addition to or instead of the REST API. In these cases, this document may not exactly reflect the method names and parameters expected by the SOAP API. In case of a discrepancy, please refer to the supplied WSDL file for the correct interface.

Except where otherwise specified, all of the web services described in this document are accessed by an HTTP GET request. HTTP POST requests are reserved for methods that change data on the server, e.g. updating a user's profile. Each request consists of a URI, and a list of parameters. The URI consists of a hostname and base path, a method name, and an optional format specifier. The parameters are appended to the URI on the query string.

Below is a sample request to a web service named "SampleRequest" in XML format.

The "/xml" format specifier in the above request could be safely omitted, as XML is the default format. Other formats supported at the current time are JSON ("JavaScript Object Notation"), and JSONP. JSONP requests all require an additional parameter, named "jsoncallback". A sample response to the request shown above has the following type:

The XML response format consists of a sequence of elements representing Type names and Property names. Type names are used for the root node, and to identify individual items in a collection. An example XML representation of the SampleResponse object is shown below:

<SampleResponse> <Echo>example</Echo> <SampleList> <SampleItem> <ItemNumber>1</ItemNumber> </SampleItem> <SampleItem> <ItemNumber>2</ItemNumber> </SampleItem> <SampleItem> <ItemNumber>3</ItemNumber> </SampleItem> </SampleList> </SampleResponse>

The JSON response format does not include type information. A description of the JSON format can be found at http://json.org. It will not be described in this document. A sample JSON response is shown below (with white space added for readability):

{ "Echo": "example", "SampleList": [ { "ItemNumber": 1 }, { "ItemNumber": 2 }, { "ItemNumber": 3 } ] }

The JSONP response format is similar, with the addition of a callback method name.

mySampleCallbackName({ "Echo": "example", "SampleList": [ { "ItemNumber": 1 }, { "ItemNumber": 2 }, { "ItemNumber": 3 } ] })

Some API Methods require a User ID, whether to retrieve user specific information (e.g. Portfolio, Watchlist), or for permissions or accounting purposes (e.g. Real Time Quotes). These methods are denoted by an input of user_id, and optionally user_password or user_tier. Depending on the hosting arrangements and usage of the API, these parameters may need to be encrypted. If encryption is required, you will be supplied with an encryption spec document, sample code, and an encryption key from Markit On Demand.

API Functions

This section describes the API functions available through the API, their input and output parameters, and the possible errors. A "?" indicates a value is optional (for the request) or may be null (in the response). A "[ ]" indicates that the value is an array containing 0 or more instances of the specified type.

Datatype Schemas