This API enables authorised wholesale customers of Simwood to, find, allocate and manage inbound numbers (both DDI/DID and non-geographic) as well as control other aspects of their account. It is intended to enable the control and issue of numbers to be integrated with customer software and web-sites and is not designed for direct end user use.

 

The API takes the form of a web service whereby requests are passed to it over HTTP with data either in the query string (GET) or passed through as form data (POST), or a combination of the two. The result is an API which can be entirely operated by a human from a web browser, although this of course is not its intended use. Consequently it can also be consumed in most programming languages without the need for external libraries. 

Similarly, the output of the API is far more flexible. No library is required to [de-]serialise data, as it is with SOAP, and output is available in a choice of formats. The default is XML, but plain XML without any of the wrappers required by SOAP. It is also available in plain text as a simple list of name/value pairs. Whilst a proprietary format (but not dissimilar to that of text based configuration files) this lends itself to rapid and simple parsing in most programming languages and easy human comprehension. JSON is available for AJAX applications, and Serialised PHP enables parse-free use from PHP. 

There are no charges for using the API but it will positively affect the way numbers are billed. The table below shows the differences:

Customers are welcome to stock numbers and de-activate them to avoid charge but this should not be done for numbers which have been sold. Any number DEACed will be unavailable in the API for 30-days afterwards in order to prevent abuse whilst still enabling customers to use the billing difference to their advantage.