Vendor Services in API-NG

The Vendor Services API  allows licensed and certified Software Vendors to manage the permissioning of Betfair accounts to their API-NG application/s.

With the Vendor Services API, you can:

• Grant permission for users to access your application
• Set the permission to expire after a specific date
• Store arbitrary information against each subscription
• View existing and historical application subscriptions
  
  

There are two key processes that Vendor will need to following when using the Vendor Services in API-NG:

• Subscribing a Customer.
• Checking a Customers Subscription History.

Each of these processes are detailed below.

Subscribing a Customer

Preconditions: Customer has a Betfair account.  Vendor has a Betfair vendor account, the app key for their app, and their (Vendor) session token.

1. Customer visits Vendor’s web site and decides to sign up for the Vendor’s app.
2. The Customer purchases a 12 month subscription to the application from the Vendor’s web site.
3. The Vendor’s web site server then calls the Account API-NG operation getApplicationSubscriptionToken, passing in the Vendor’s app key, a valid session token for the Vendor’s Betfair account (to prove that they own that App Key) and the length of the subscription required (365 days in this scenario).
4. Betfair returns to the vendor a Subscription Token of the form ABCD-EFGH-IJKL.
5. The Subscription Token is then provided to the instance of the Vendor’s app used by the Customer. 
   
   This may happen in a number of ways, including:
   
   i)  Emailed from Vendor to Customer, who then types the subscription token into the app.
   ii) Associated with the Customer’s app instance by the Vendor, so that the token can be cited by the app based on Customer login to the app.
   
   
6. The Vendors App requires Customer to login to Betfair using interactive login method. See sample code interactive login sample code here
7. Betfair returns Customer’s session token to the app.
8. The subscription is then activated by the app calling activateApplicationSubscription passing in the subscription token and a valid session token for the Customer

Checking a Customers Subscription History

In this scenario the Vendor wishes to check the customer’s subscription status to establish if the customer has:

1. An existing active subscription.
2. An expired subscription.
3. A cancelled subscription.
4. No current or previous subscription history (i.e. Customer is entirely new).

This can be done within the application itself (client side) or by Vendor on their app server (server side).  Each process is explained in more detail below:

Client side process:

1. Vendor’s app client requires Customer to login to Betfair using interactive login method.  
2. Betfair returns Customer’s session token to the Vendor’s app client.
3. Vendor’s app client calls getApplicationSubscriptionHistory citing Vendors App Key in the request body and the customer's session token in the X-Authentication header.
4. Betfair returns Customer’s subscription history.  If an empty list is returned then the customer has no current or previous subscription history (i.e. Customer is entirely new)

Server side process:

1. Vendor’s app client requires Customer to login to Betfair using interactive login method.  
2. Betfair returns Customer’s session token to the Vendor’s app client.
3. Vendor’s app client calls getVendorClientId citing Customer’s session token from step 1.
4. Betfair returns Customer’s vendorClientId.
5. Vendor’s App client sends Customer’s vendorClientId to Vendor’s app server.
6. Vendor’s app server calls getApplicationSubscriptionHistory citing Vendor’s session token, Vendor’s app key, and the vendorClientID from step 4.
7. Betfair returns Customer’s complete history for the Vendor’s app (as identified by the app key cited in step 5).  If an empty list is returned then the customer has no current or previous subscription history (i.e. Customer is entirely new).