Custom data types

Leverage existing integrations to fetch data types not included in Codat's out-of-the box data model

Advanced feature

Request guidance from your Codat contact if you want to implement this feature of our API.

What are custom data types?

Codat's standard data models leverage our extensive industry experience and knowledge, which we used to identify and standardize a multitude of data types that best support your business.

However, your use case may require additional data types from our integrations that are excluded from our standard model. For example, we do not currently fetch any data from Xero's Payroll and NetSuite's Expense Reports endpoints.

With custom data, you can fetch new, non-standardized data types that are not included in our out-of-the-box data model for the integrations we support. You will need to configure and request these custom data types using our API endpoints.

Custom or supplemental data?

Are you looking to fetch, create, or update additional properties in data types already supported by Codat's standardized data model? You might need to use supplemental data instead.

Supported integrations

Configure custom data

Create new custom data type

Use our Configure custom data type endpoint to create a new data type for each integration you require. Keep these guidelines in mind:

• You can only indicate a single data source for each custom data type.
• It is not possible to specify nested objects or arrays within the requiredData property.
• You can query the underlying platform's API by specifying the query as part of the dataSource property.

We advise you make your custom configuration as similar as possible to our standard data types so you can interact with them in exactly the same way.

Request

PUT /integrations​/{platformKey}/datatypes/custom/{customDataIdentifier}

{
    "dataSource": "{endpointFromUnderlyingPlatform}",//required
    "requiredData": {
      "{nameYourField}": "$.{fieldNameFromUnderlyingPlatform}",
      "{nameYourField}": "$.{fieldNameFromUnderlyingPlatform}"
    },
    "keyBy": [“$.{fieldNameFromUnderlyingPlatform}”],//required
    "sourceModifiedDate": ["{fieldNameFromUnderlyingPlatform}"]  
}

Example

Example request using QuickBooks Online's CashFlow endpoint

PUT /integrations/qhyg/datatypes/custom/qbo-cashflow-report

{
    "dataSource": "/reports/CashFlow",
    "requiredData": {
        "Heads": "$.Header.EndPeriod",
        "Header": "$.Header",
        "Rows": "$.Rows",
        "Columns": "$.Columns"
    },
    "keyBy": ["$.Header.ReportName"],
    "sourceModifiedDate": ["$.Header.Time"]
}

Check your configuration values!

Codat does not validate any of the values you enter in the configuration request. If you misspell values or don't specify the full API routes, you will receive a fetch error when trying to read the custom data type later.

Refer to the platform's own API documentation to make sure you are using the correct endpoint, route, and field names.

Update existing configuration

Once you configured a custom data type, you can't change its customDataIdentifier. However, you can update the data type's content using the Configure custom data type endpoint.

View existing configuration

You can view previously created configurations for a specific platform using the following endpoint:

• Get custom data configuration returns the configuration of the specified custom data type for the platform you indicate in platformKey.

Test your configuration

It's not possible to test custom data types in the Codat Sandbox. Instead, create a test company with a data connection to an integration and trial different configuration options.

Sync and view custom data

Custom data configuration is created for a specific platform, so you can only queue a custom data type sync for connections that use that platform as a source. Use the Refresh custom data type endpoint to do so:

POST /companies/{companyId}/connections/{connectionId}/data/queue/custom/{customDataIdentifier}

Refresh all data

Requests to our Refresh all data endpoint do not trigger a sync for any of the custom datasets.

To view synced custom data, use the List custom data type records endpoint. You must specify a page number in the request.

GET /companies/{companyId}/connections/{connectionId}/data/custom/{customDataIdentifier}?page=1

To view the read history for your custom data types, use the following endpoints. In the response, dataType property will reflect the custom data type as custom/{customDataIdentifier}:

• List pull operations to view the company's read history for all of its data types
• Get pull operation to view information about a single specific dataset

💡 Tips and traps

• Custom data types can be used at record and line item level, but only support fetch operations.

• Custom data types only support JSON responses from the integrations' APIs.

• Codat's querying functionality doesn't support custom data types, but you can include URL parameters that are accepted by the underlying platform in the dataSource of your custom data type configuration.

• Codat's Fetch on first link functionality doesn't support custom data types.