Field identifiers

Fields are identified by column headers. Two types of columns may be included in your data files: identifying columns and data columns. Identifying columns are necessary when the record/row within the file relates to an existing entity in Guardian, and are used to locate the existing record. Whereas, rows of data that don’t yet exist in Guardian have no record identification. Identifying columns follow a naming convention of “ID.” followed by the name of the field used as the identifier. Specifically, upper-case ID followed by a period followed by the field name. Only certain field names are allowed as identifying columns (see individual supported data set types for specific field information).

Your data file must include the names of the fields that are to be updated. The field names used to identify data are consistent with the parameter names supported by Guardian REST APIs. To determine the field names necessary for a data file, reference each data feed type’s parameter table. Field names are listed in camel case such that compound words are represented with the first word in lower-case and each subsequent word in capital-case (e.g. firstName). Field names should be included in the file as the field column header following the same format. Certain fields are required for each data feed type or action (i.e. add or update). These fields must be included in your file. Optional fields may be included as well. Simply omit any optional fields from the file that do not need to be updated, or are unused by your organization. No order is imposed as to the position of the fields within the file (i.e. fieldA does not need to be first, fieldB second, and so on).