Data types

This section contains the different data types that are related to the API.

Character encoding

The API is using UTF-8 as character encoding. But there is one limitation and that is that the character encoding is limited characters available in ISO 8859-1.

Any character that is not available in ISO 8859-1 will be replaced with a question mark (?).

This will create a problem when creating a HMAC signature since the signature will be different from the one that is created by the API.

string

Strings have a maximum character length of 255 characters, otherwise it is noted in the description of the property.

{
    "name": "Test Name"
}

int and cent

Int´s and cent´s are numeric based values but acts as strings.

int is a whole number, while cent is a whole number representing a currency value in cents (Öre for SEK/DKR/NOK and cent for USD).

{
    "topay": "200"
}

dec

Dec´s are decimal numeric value, but acts as strings. Note that it uses the point (.) as a separator.

{
    "topay": "200.20"
}

date

Dates are using the ISO 8601 standard in format Year with four digits, Month and Day (C-style formatting pattern Y-m-d). One example is 2020-02-12 representing the 12th of February 2020.

{
    "paymentdate": "2024-01-05"
}

array

A list with a set of data.

{
    "paymentoptions": [
        {
            "method": "1",
            "currency": "SEK,DKK,NOK,GBP,EUR,USD",
            "language": "sv,da,no,en"
        },
        {
            "method": "2",
            "currency": "SEK,DKK,NOK,GBP,EUR,USD",
            "language": "sv,da,no,en"
        }
    ]
}

object

An object is a collection of properties.

{
    "paymentoptions": {
        "method": "1",
        "currency": "SEK,DKK,NOK,GBP,EUR,USD",
        "language": "sv,da,no,en"
    }
}

Special notes on data types

Inconsistent data types

Due to some earlier sins in the API, some data types are not consistent.

Ths most common problem is int, cent and dec that should be strings but in some cases are numeric values.

This affects implementations in languages that uses strict typing.

This is something that we are working on to fix, but it is not a quick fix.

Boolean

The API does not use the boolean data type, instead it uses a mix of string and integers with the values "true", "false", "0" and "1".

Last modified: 13 September 2024