LeadGen Business:Introduction

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The Business Web Service is a REST based Web service that can be used to select, get counts, and purchase targeted business mailing lists, in real-time, anytime. It is available to mailers for private, in-house use, or as a portal for your customers to use to make their list selections. You can custom-design a website to meet your own needs, as well as those of your customers.

It has two method calls, which uses an HTTP query string to pass a request with selected options. An HTTPS query works just the same as an HTTP query.

Calls

Get Counts Call

This call returns an XML document showing the record counts for a specific request, allowing you to see how many records are available for the selected parameters. A sample URL:

http://list.melissadata.net/v1/Business/rest/Service.svc/get/zip?id=123456&zip=92688&sale-d=2

Buy Lists Call

This call initiates the purchase of the list detailed by the request. This call is similar to the Get call, but has additional information returned. This information is the order ID, number of usage, and download URL. If the purchase of the list was successful, you will receive a link to the list file in the format you selected in the options. To specify how many records you want to buy, use the qty parameter. If no quantity is specified the maximum and default is 100,000 for all file types, except for Excel and CSV files (that have a 65,535 record limit). Each buy request is logged immediately before and after order id generation. A sample URL:

http://list.melissadata.net/v1/Business/rest/Service.svc/buy/zip?id=123456&zip=92688&sale-d=2&file=7

Requests

REST Protocol

The Consumer Web Service uses the REST protocol, which uses an HTTP query string to pass a request with selected options. An HTTPS query works just the same as an HTTP query.

Using the REST service may require that you encode certain characters using the proper URL entities before adding them to a URL. Characters like spaces, slashes, ampersands, and others must be replaced by special codes, which usually consist of a percent sign followed by a two-digit hexadecimal number.

The following table shows the replacements for the most common characters.

Character	URL Encoded
Space	%20 or +
*	%2A
#	%23
&	%26
%	%25
$	%28
+	%2B
,	%2C
/	%2F
:	%3A
;	%3B
<	%3C
=	%3D
>	%3E
?	%3F
@	%40
[	%5B
]	%5D
~	%7E

Many modern programming languages have a URL encode and URL decoding function that automates these character replacements.

Request Format

The REST Protocol has a specific format for all requests. The basic format is:

http://Melissa Data Database/Protocol Type/Business API/Call Type/Request Type?Customer ID& Options

An example:

http://list.melissadata.net/v1/Business/rest/Service.svc/get/zip?id=123456&zip=92688&sale-d=2&file=7

This example uses the REST protocol with the Business API to access Melissa Data’s databases to make a Get call with a ZIP Request, tied to the customer account, for ZIP Code 92688.

Order of Operations

Requests and returns may be preceded in the following sequence:

1. Get count
2. Return count
3. Buy list
4. Return count, order id and download URL
5. Download/retrieve list