< Back
You are here:
Print

API requests submitted to BankruptcyWatch by SFTP must have the following format:

  • They must be in CSV format. Office documents in XLS or XLSX format are not supported.
  • They must be encoded as UTF-8. Text will be converted to ASCII before processing.
  • They must consist of three blocks of rows (see Figure 1):
    1. A header block, containing a list of name/value pairs
    2. An empty row
    3. A data block, containing an unlimited number of rows of data

Header Block

The header block consists of a list of rows each containing two cells. In each row, the first cell contains the header name, and the second cell contains the header value. The order of the headers is not important.

HeaderDescriptionRequired
versionThe API versionyes
operationThe operation name, e.g., AddPortfolioItemsyes
usernameThe BankruptcyWatch usernameyes
passwordThe BankruptcyWatch passwordyes
subscriptionIdThe subscription IDRequired by AddPortfolioItems and RemovePortfolioItems

Data Block

The data block consists of a list of rows whose interpretation depends on the operation being called. For the operations AddPortfolioItems and RemovePortfolioItems, the data block consists of a list of portfolio items. The number of columns in each row, and the interpretation of each column, depends on whether the subscription has type consumer portfolio or case portfolio.

To simplify integration of the BankruptcyWatch API, we allow several API operations to be invoked by sending a CSV file over SFTP, instead of by calling the API directly. Currently, the following two API operations are supported:

If you wish to make API requests via SFTP, BankruptcyWatch will issue you a username and password for its SFTP server.

BankruptcyWatch SFTP Server

BankruptcyWatch provides an SFTP server for its clients to use. You can log into the SFTP server using the command line or a graphical SFTP client.

PropertyValue
Domainsftp.bk.watch
UsernameProvided by BankruptcyWatch
PasswordProvided by BankruptcyWatch
Home Directory/home/sftp.USERNAME

Each user home directory has two subdirectories:

DirectoryDescription
inboxStores messages sent to the user. The user is responsible for deleting the messages after they have been viewed.
outboxStores messages created by the user. BankruptcyWatch processes these messages each day and deletes them.

BankruptcyWatch creates two types of messages in a user’s inbox:

  1. CSV files containing error messages generated when processing SFTP requests. See Error Reporting
  2. Notifications sent by the subscriptions system. To have subscriptions notifications delivered to your SFTP inbox, add a delivery method with message transport SFTP and the following delivery address:

See Next: Importing Results from BankruptcyWatch