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apiyodlee

Yodlee APIs: ContentServiceInfos versus SiteInfos

There appear to be two lines of APIs for adding, authenticating and aggregating sites. Depending upon which version of the Documentation/SDK set your rep started you off on, or where in the SDK Guide you started implementing from determines where you start.

Path #1 starts at

  • ContentServiceTraversal which allows for the retrieval of all ContentServiceInfo (by container type (such as BANK)
  • ItemManagementService is used to add these items
  • Refresh is done through RefreshService (most API not containing the word Site)

Path #2 starts at

  • SiteTranversalService which allows for the retrieval of all SiteInfo (no apparent support for Container Type filter)
  • SiteAccountManagementService is used to add these items
  • Refresh is done through Refreshservice (all API containing the word Site).

From the best that I can tell the aforementioned API have a lot of functionality duplication. I have noticed certain API that exist on one branch and not the other but usually they are minor changes (e.g. things you are able to filter by).

I started off with ContentServiceInfo because the documentation and samples that our rep initially gave us started there. Additionally this API started off by providing greater granularity (e.g. simply being able to filter by Container type since we were pretty much only interested in Banks and Processor sites (which I do not believe you guys support)).

My questions are:

  1. Do the two branches of API do the exact same thing?
  2. Do they mostly behave the same way?
  3. Do they back-end to the exact same
    • System
    • Data store
    • Scraper?
  4. Is one line of API supposed to be deprecated sooner in the future than another?
  5. Does one line of API have more future in terms of actually adding new or augmenting existing functionality?
Solution

  • Site-level addition has been introduced through Yodlee APIs to overcome the fact that though a user had bank,creditcard,loan,rewards account at the same end site, user had to provide credentials for each of these containers. Site level addition APIs try to add all these containers with only 1 set of credentials. That's the only difference between container based addition and site based addition.

    As to answer your questions:

    Do the two branches of API do the exact same thing?
Do they mostly behave the same way?

    If you mean the aggregation functionality, Yes.Except for the fact that Site level adds/refreshes all the container(bank,creditcard,loan,rewards) and Container level can add/refresh only one container per API call, all the other behavior will remain the same. 

    Do they back-end to the exact same
    System
    Data store
    Scraper?

    If you are referring to the Yodlee data gathering components, Yes.

    Is one line of API supposed to be deprecated sooner in the future than another?

    No.Both these sets of APIs cater to different needs. If you are a company who solely rely on Creditcard data, using site level addition will be overkill as it will take longer time for the aggregation and it makes more sense to use container based addition. There is also the factor of backward compatibility, which rules out deprecation of APIs.