Creating a custom people view on the fly

Introduction

Many Datafiniti customers are interested in using our people data with only specific fields in the record results of a query. In this guide, we will show you a couple of ways to set up a custom view.

Setting a view in your People Search API

Whenever you set up your people search API body you can create a view by declaring the fields in the JSON of the body. Let's use the following query as a base for a property search:

{
    "query":"country:US AND province:TX AND city:\"el paso\"",
    "num_records":20
}

Now let's add the view to the body that allows only the following fields:

• address
• city
• firstname
• lastname
• province
• postalCode
• email
• phones

{
    "query":"country:US AND province:TX AND city:\"el paso\"",
    "num_records":20,
    "view":[
        {
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "address"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "city"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "country"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "emails"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "firstName"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "lastName"
		}
    ]
}

Here is an example of the download of this view:

• Custom People View CSV

Creating a custom people view via create view API endpoint

This method will create a permanent view that you can declare by name in the view of your search body. Using the https://api.datafiniti.co/v4/views API endpoint you can create a view. We will use the previous fields as our view body. We will name this view people_simplified.

{
	"name": "people_simplified",
	"data_type": "people",
	"fields": [
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "businessName"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "city"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "country"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "emails"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "firstName"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "industry"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "jobLevel"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "jobTitle"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "lastName"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "linkedinURL"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "phones"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "postalCode"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "primaryEmail"
		},
		{
			"flatten": false,
			"sub_fields": [],
			"name": "province"
		}
	]
}

📘

Name

Please note you can name the view any string value not currently used. To check your current view you can use: https://api.datafiniti.co/v4/views?page=1&limit=10

🚧

dataType

Be sure that you declare the correct dataType to the dataType you wish to search. As we need to match the API to the dataType's schema. Learn more about Property Data Schema.

Conclusion

This will allow you to create a custom view to select only the people field you need. In this case creating a simplified people record, ready to use as a data source of people leads.