Identifying users
Overview
In order for Dopt to power experiences for your users, Dopt needs to be aware of those users and their properties.
Developers will need to identify users to Dopt using the Dopt users API.
We support two approaches for sending your user data to Dopt: individual identification and batch identification. In both cases, we manage your user data via upsertion i.e. we provide a single set of APIs for both creating new users in Dopt and updating existing users.
Individual identification
You can use the users API to send us data for a single user. If you've used a Customer Data Platform (CDP) like Segment before, this will be familiar to you. In practice, you might integrate individual identification code into your users CRUD handler.
curl 'https://users.dopt.com/identify' \
-X POST \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-H 'x-api-key:$USERS_API_KEY' \
-d '{
"identifier": "123456789",
"properties": {
"name": "Joe McKenney",
"email": "joe@dopt.com",
"city": "Oakland"
}
}'
We recommend you use a unique user identifier that won’t change for your identifier, such as a database ID from your organization’s internal systems.
Nested user properties are currently unsupported, but will still be accepted as valid values.
When you use the users API in the browser the source’s write key is public because it runs in a user’s browser and can be accessed using the browser’s developer tools.
You can also call /identify
via the server which collects data from a server-based installation and isn't accessible to the user.
We have deprecated the /identify/{:identifier:}
API in favor of the above API.
The previous API specified the identifier
in the request URL while the current API specifies the identifier
in the request body.
We will continue to support the previous API, but we recommend that you migrate to using the current API.
Batch identification
Many users have likely been created in your system before Dopt was integrated. To tell us about those users we offer a batch identify endpoint in the users API that allows you to send us data for many users at once. This endpoint allows you to identify up to 100 users at a time.
curl 'https://users.dopt.com/identify/batch' \
-X POST \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-H 'x-api-key:$USERS_API_KEY' \
-d '[
{
"identifier": "123456789",
"properties": {
"name": "Joe McKenney",
"email": "joe@dopt.com",
"city": "Oakland"
}
},
{
"identifier": "987654321",
"properties": {
"name": "Alon Bartur",
"email": "alon@dopt.com",
"city": "Oakland"
}
}
]'
We've removed support for the previous /identify/bulk
API in favor of the current /identify/batch
API above.
The current API allows for greater flexibility while being less error prone during user specification.
Updating user properties
You can update user properties by using the users API. Call the users API with a user identifier and new or updated user properties. The user properties will be updated via upsertion: if the user property doesn’t exist, it will be created. If it does exist, it will be updated.
Associating users with a group
You can associate the currently identified user with a group by calling
curl 'https://users.dopt.com/identify' \
-X POST \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-H 'x-api-key:$USERS_API_KEY' \
-d '{
"identifier": "2a845972-4cde-4cb4-ba14-5cb2fc15ec4c",
"properties": {
"name": "Evelyn Reichert",
"email": "evelyn@example.com",
},
"groups": [
{
"identifier": "akh3j4-e14cd-cd51-33cabedac8c8a",
"properties": {
"name": "Acme co"
}
}
]
}'