Visitor Privacy API (formerly Visitor Lookup API)

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The Visitor Privacy API (formerly Visitor Lookup API) is used to query visitor profile records from the Customer Data Hub. This API allows you to retrieve known data about a specific visitor, delete a visitor record, and check the status of a delete request.

These requests can also be used in support of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance to satisfy the requirement of responding to data subject access requests.

In this article:

• How It Works
• Limits and Intended Use
• Permission Requirements
• Required Parameters
• Authentication
• Example
• Visitor Fields
• Example
• GET Visitor
• Example cURL Request
• Example Response
• Error Messages
• DELETE Visitor
• Example cURL Request
• Example Response
• Error Messages
• GET Transaction
• Example cURL Request
• Example Response
• GET Visitor ID Attributes
• Example cURL Request
• Example Response

How It Works

Server-side Editor permission within CDH permissions is required for this API. Visitor lookups are based on a Visitor ID attribute from your account.

Limits and Intended Use

The Visitor Privacy API is intended to satisfy regulatory requirements such as GDPR and CCPA and is not designed for high volume usage. Tealium recommends that you have a maximum of one (1) connection open to this API at any given time. Contact your account manager if you estimate that your usage will exceed 1000 API calls per day.

Permission Requirements

• Server-side Editor permission

Required Parameters

• attributeId – The numeric ID of this attribute.
• attributeValue – The value to search for.

Authentication

The bearer token is used to authenticate all API calls and not the API key. The API key is only used in the authentication call.

See the Getting Started guide to learn about generating a bearer token from the API key.

Example

For a Visitor ID attribute named Email Address with an attribute ID of 86, the attributeID would be used as a parameter to the API calls, as shown in the following example:

attributeId=86
attributeValue=user@example.com

Visitor Fields

Visitors are returned as JSON objects that contain the following fields:

Object Name	Type	Description
transaction_id	string	A unique ID returned in every response for logging purposes and the status API.
live	Boolean	Set to True if the visitor is currently in a live session.
visitor	object	The visitor object with sub-objects for each of the attribute data types: Visitor IDs secondary_ids : { } Numbers/Array of Numbers "metrics" : { } "metric_lists" : { } Strings/Array of Strings/Set of Strings "properties" : { } "property_lists" : { } "property_sets" : { } Booleans/Array of Booleans "flags" : { } "flag_lists" : { } Dates "dates" : { } Badges "badges" : { } Tallies "metric_sets" : { }

Example

{
    "transaction_id": "a1b23bcb4b5b56",
    "live": false,
    "visitor": {
        "metrics": {
            "Weeks since first visit": 0.14,
            "Total referred visits": 11,
            "Lifetime visit count": 12,
            "Average visit duration in minutes": 0.36,
            "Lifetime event count": 35,
            "Total time spent on site in minutes": 4.27,
            "Total direct visits": 1
        },
        "dates": {
            "Last visit": 1521217490000,
            "last_visit_start_ts": 1521217490000,
            "First visit": 1521134626000
        },
        "properties": {
            "Lifetime browser versions used (favorite)": "Chrome",
            "Lifetime browser types used (favorite)": "Chrome",
            "profile": "main",
            "Lifetime devices used (favorite)": "Mac desktop",
            "Lifetime platforms used (favorite)": "browser",
            "Last event URL": "http://www.tealium.com/",
            "account": "tealium",
            "Lifetime operating systems used (favorite)": "Mac OS X"
        },
        "flags": {
            "Returning visitor": true
        },
        "badges": ["Unbadged"],
        "metric_sets": {
            "Lifetime operating systems used": {
                "Mac OS X": 12
            },
            "Lifetime devices used": {
                "Mac desktop": 12
            },
            "Lifetime browser versions used": {
                "Chrome": 12
            },
            "Lifetime browser types used": {
                "Chrome": 12
            },
            "Lifetime platforms used": {
                "browser": 12
            }
        }
    }
}

GET Visitor

Use the following GET command to retrieve a visitor record:

GET /v2/visitor/accounts/{account}/profiles/{profile}?attributeId={attributeId}&attributeValue={attributeValue}&prettyName={prettyName}

This command uses the following parameters:

• attributeId
  • The numeric ID representing a Visitor ID attribute from your account.
• attributeValue
  • The value to look up.
  • Values containing special characters must be URL encoded.
• prettyName
  • A Boolean value indicating how attribute keys display in the response:
    • True – Attributes display as user-friendly names, such as "Lifetime Order Value".
    • False – Attributes display as numeric ID's, such as "28471".

Example cURL Request

curl -H 'Authorization: Bearer {token}' \
 -G \
'https://api.tealiumiq.com/v2/visitor/accounts/my_account/profiles/main' \
 --data-urlencode 'attributeId=86' \
 --data-urlencode 'attributeValue=user@example.com' \
 --data 'prettyName=true'

Example Response

See the example visitor object for the format of the response.

Error Messages

Potential error messages for this task are:

Error Message	Description
404 Not Found	{ "returnCode" : 1240, "message" : "Account was not found" }
	{ "returnCode" : 1250, "message" : "Profile was not found" }

DELETE Visitor

Consider the following prior to deleting one or more visitor records:

• Requests to delete visitor records result in the deletion of all data associated to the visitor ID value, including stitched visitor records.
• Delete requests are queued for processing and may take up to 1-4 days to complete.
• If a visitor replaces or has been replaced by another visitor, all visitors that have been stitched are deleted.
• The parameters to the DELETE command must be passed as URL-encoded form fields using the content-type " application/x-www-form-urlencoded", and not as query string parameters.

Use the following DELETE command to delete a visitor record:

DELETE /v2/visitor/accounts/{account}/profiles/{profile}
  attributeID={value}
  attributeValue={value}

This command uses the following parameters:

• attributeId
  The numeric ID representing a Visitor ID attribute from your account.
• attributeValue
  The value to look up.

Example cURL Request

curl -H 'Authorization: Bearer {token}' \
-X DELETE \
'https://api.tealiumiq.com/v2/visitor/accounts/my_account/profiles/main' \
--data-urlencode "attributeId=86"
--data-urlencode "attributeValue=user@example.com"

Example Response

The response to a delete request includes a transaction_id and a status. The transaction_id is used in the GET transactions call to check the status of a previous request. The following status strings are possible: PENDING, SUCCESS, or FAILED.

A successful response displays the 202 Accepted message with a transactionId value. If a request with the exact same account, profile, attributeId , and attributeValue already exists with a transaction status of PENDING, the existing transaction ID is returned, as follows:

{
"transactionId" : "{transactionId1}" 
}

Error Messages

Potential error messages for this task are:

Error Message	Description
404 Not Found	{ "returnCode" : 1240, "message" : "Account was not found" } { "returnCode" : 1250, "message" : "Profile was not found" }

GET Transaction

A transaction refers to any GET visitor or DELETE visitor request. DELETE visitor requests are queued for later processing, which makes the transaction_id the unique record for that request and ID to be used when checking the processing status.

Use the following GET command to check the status of a transaction:

GET /v2/visitor/accounts/{account}/profiles/{profile}/transactions/{transaction_id}

Example cURL Request

See the Getting Started guide to learn about generating a bearer token from the API key. The bearer token is used in the API calls, rather than the API key.

curl -H 'Authorization: Bearer {token}' \ 
https://api.tealiumiq.com/v2/visitor/accounts/my_account/profiles/main/transactions/0123456789

Example Response

The response contains an object with one key/value pair where the key is a transaction_id and the value is one of the following status strings: PENDING, SUCCESS, or FAILED.

{
  "0123456789" : "SUCCESS"
}

GET Visitor ID Attributes

Use the following GET command to retrieve a list of the Visitor ID attributes available in your account:

GET /v2/visitor/accounts/{account}/profiles/{profile}/ids

Example cURL Request

curl -H 'Authorization: Bearer {token}' \ 
https://api.tealiumiq.com/v2/visitor/accounts/my_account/profiles/main/ids

Example Response

The response for this command is an object of key/value pairs representing the numeric ID and name of the Visitor ID attribute.

{
  "43" : "Email Address",
  "57" : "Tax ID Number"
}