What is a payload?

A payload is the essential data carried within a transmission unit that is delivered to the end user at the destination.

The payload does not include the 'overhead' data required to get the data to its destination. It is made up of fields which may be grouped under Nodes.

Every component method has an input and an output payload defined. These are the definitions of all fields required to support that method. They differ according to the actions carried out. For example, a query input payload includes field definitions to allow filtering of data. Whereas the output payload returned does not include filtering fields. A create input payload includes definitions of data to be imported; the output payload includes definitions of any errors returned by the import process.

The payload definitions provided include all possible data fields and child records for each component.

Note: Payloads are defined in XML and referred to as SSML format (SunSystems XML). Date and numeric fields use international XML standards. The standard for date format is ddmmyyyy, the standard for numeric format uses a fullstop (.) as a decimal separator and no thousands separator.

Note: Values containing multiple spaces entered as node values when creating an output payload are truncated to a single space in some browsers. Therefore, although the input payload displays ' XYZ' for example, an error message is displayed as the output payload value may exceed the maximum character length of 15 characters.