What is a Store?
The API has several stores, each of which holds data about different entities. For example, there is:
- A contributor store, which holds information about actors, directors etc.
- A content instance store, which contains the primary metadata for programs, series, season and event(linear, VOD catalogue) metadata.
- A source store, which contains the channel and VOD content provider metadata.
Each store holds many JSON documents. All of the documents in a store conform to a JSON schema specific to the entity relevant to that store.
A list of the stores in the API, together with the number of documents in each store, can be obtained with the request:
https://<base-url>/stores-active?api_key=<api-key>
Content Instance Stores
The API includes 6 stores that correspond to the 6 different levels of the
Simply.TV Program Hierarchy:
- series
- season
- multipartprogram
- program
- programvariation
- event
The event store is used for both linear events and VoD packages. The eventType property within each event document indicates which of the two is described by the document.
The programvariation and multipartprogram stores are not populated in some instances of the API.
Since these entities have very similar properties (they can all have titles, descriptions, genres, ratings, cast and crew, images etc), all 6 stores use the same JSON schema.
Other stores
The API includes 2 other stores:
- One for sources. A source can be either a linear channel (e.g. BBC World News) or a VoD catalogue (e.g. all the programs that a customer has asked Simply.TV to provide metadata for). The sourceType property within each source document indicates which of the two is described by the document.
- One for contributors. A contributor is typically an actor or a director, but the store may also include things like sports teams and production companies.
