Frequently Asked Questions
General
Section titled “General”How can I get started using the VIA APIs?
Section titled “How can I get started using the VIA APIs?”In addition to providing a great user interface for Vimond VIA, we also offer REST APIs to help you automate workflows.
The Vimond VIA APIs broadly cover two primary use cases; firstly machine-to-machine integrations for ingesting and managing your content catalog, and secondly we provide highly scalable APIs for supporting you in building great end-user applications where the goal is to showcase and monetise your content catalog on any device.
We recommend that you first read through the Terminology and Concepts document. This will give you a good basis for understanding the VIA APIs, their structure, and API Objects.
The developer hub is divided into Guides with code samples found in the left menu and API References found in the top menu. In the API Reference section, you can interact directly with the API in sandbox mode.
How can I upgrade from Vimond Classic (1.x) to Vimond VIA (2.x)?
Section titled “How can I upgrade from Vimond Classic (1.x) to Vimond VIA (2.x)?”Migration planning and upgrade steps from Vimond Classic to VIA are handled with your Vimond account team. Please contact Vimond Support for guidance.
What kind of APIs does VIA provide?
Section titled “What kind of APIs does VIA provide?”VIA provides a range of REST APIs that allow you to build an end-to-end streaming service. These APIs cover various functionalities such as content ingesting, content curation, content publishing, monetizing your content, content discovery, and end-user video playback to name a few.
Which data formats do the VIA APIs support?
Section titled “Which data formats do the VIA APIs support?”While some of the older VIA APIs generally accept data in both XML (application/xml) and JSON (application/json) formats, we strongly encourage the use of JSON as XML is not supported in the new services we develop.
For more details, refer to the A Note on XML and JSON Formats document.
How can I authenticate my API requests?
Section titled “How can I authenticate my API requests?”To authenticate your API requests for content operations services and machine-to-machine API calls, please refer to the Machine-to-Machine API Authentication guide in the Guides and Tutorials section.
For viewer-facing services and making API calls on behalf of end-users, you can refer to the End-User Authentication guide in the Viewer Facing Services section, which explains how to use Open ID Connect and JWT tokens.
Content operations
Section titled “Content operations”How can I ingest new assets, metadata, images, and/or videos?
Section titled “How can I ingest new assets, metadata, images, and/or videos?”To ingest new content into the VIA Platform, you can use the Feed Ingest method, which allows you to easily ingest assets, metadata, images, and videos using a Media RSS or Atom feed.
For more details, refer to the Feed Ingest documentation.
How can I publish assets and control licensing windows?
Section titled “How can I publish assets and control licensing windows?”In addition to using Feed Ingest for controlling publishing and license windows, you can also use the Vimond API directly. The Content Publishing guide provides details on how to use the API for publishing assets and controlling licensing windows.
How can I build a navigational structure and list assets?
Section titled “How can I build a navigational structure and list assets?”Assets are organized into Categories, which are further organized into a tree structure. You can independently publish Assets and Categories on different Platforms.
To build a navigational structure and list assets, you can curate Assets and Categories into Lists, which can be used to promote content throughout your website/application. The Curated Content guide provides a complete example of building a full page with various elements such as carousels, curated and automated smart lists.
Additionally, the Content Discovery guide provides API details on using our APIs to build a website/application to showcase your content.
How can I ingest extra metadata in different languages for Categories, Assets, etc?
Section titled “How can I ingest extra metadata in different languages for Categories, Assets, etc?”To ingest extra metadata in different languages for Categories, Assets, and more, you can refer to the Content Metadata guide in the Guides and Tutorials section. It provides a tutorial on the different types of Content Metadata found in the Vimond Platform.
How can I use search for free-text search and content filtering?
Section titled “How can I use search for free-text search and content filtering?”For free-text search and content filtering, you can refer to the Content Discovery guide, which provides a tutorial on how to use search and apply filters to find Categories, Assets, and Curated Lists.
How can I show images for all my Categories, Assets, and Curated Lists?
Section titled “How can I show images for all my Categories, Assets, and Curated Lists?”Images in VIA are organized in image packs, which can be referred to from various Vimond entities such as Assets, Categories, Lists, etc. The Content Images guide explains how to fetch images from the Vimond Image Service.
Video operations
Section titled “Video operations”How can I implement video playback?
Section titled “How can I implement video playback?”To implement video playback with the Vimond API, you can refer to the Video Playback tutorial. It provides a step-by-step guide on how to implement video playback, fetch subtitles, and handle different player events for generating view history.
How can I display a user’s viewing history?
Section titled “How can I display a user’s viewing history?”The User Viewing History Service tutorial explains how to handle a user’s viewing history, including retrieving and managing their viewing history data.
How can I handle a user’s device registration?
Section titled “How can I handle a user’s device registration?”The Device Registration tutorial provides guidance on listing all connected devices for a user and managing device registration, including adding or removing devices.
Where can I find the viewer-facing services and APIs?
Section titled “Where can I find the viewer-facing services and APIs?”Viewer-facing services and APIs are documented under Guides → Viewer-facing in the sidebar—for example End-user authentication, Video playback, and Content discovery.
Conditional access
Section titled “Conditional access”How can users purchase access to content?
Section titled “How can users purchase access to content?”The Payment tutorial explains how to initialize a purchase and complete the transaction for users to purchase access to content.
How do I get a user’s subscriptions?
Section titled “How do I get a user’s subscriptions?”The Subscriptions tutorial provides instructions on how to fetch a user’s subscriptions using the VIA APIs.