DutyMan Administrators' Guide

CONTENTS

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The DutyMan Web Service

The DutyMan web service provides an application program interface (API) which can be used to read, write and delete member records in the DutyMan database. All standard DutyMan fields, as specified for upload CSV files, are supported including items of additional member information (Infos).

The API can be used by any application written in a programming language that can consume SOAP web services.

The API Testbed

The DutyMan API Testbed is a Visual Basic project which documents the API and provides prototyping of calls to the web service. You can download the Testbed project from the DutyMan website as a zip file (approximately 300Kb).

Unzip the project into any suitable folder then open and run form Testbed.vb.

The form's Instructions for Use tab describes how to use the testbed.

Duplicate Names

When adding or updating a member name to a name already present via the API the action is rejected with the message duplicate entry except in this specific set of circumstances:

  • API option keytype=dbid is used
  • no NameQualifier field is present

When both conditions apply the duplicate name is accepted but with the value of Member DBID as a Name Qualifier to avoid duplicates. So when adding, a new member record is created with the appropriate member name and a Name Qualifier of the value of Member DBID. When updating, the member name is changed to the duplicate value but Name Qualifier is set to the value of Member DBID.