You can deliver your content to CBS Interactive using either a web interface, or programmatically using HTTP. If you are delivering a small amount of content and you don't want to write the code needed to deliver via HTTP, you should use the web interface. If you are delivering a large amount of content or updating your content regularly, it will be more efficient to deliver it via the HTTP interface.

Creating a content app

Before you can deliver your content, you must set up a content app. You only have to do this once. To set up a content app:

          1. Log into the Development Center.
          2. Under MY APPS on the Development Center home page, click Create New App. The ABOUT THIS APPLICATION page appears.
          3. Select consists solely of content that will be uploaded in CSV or XML format. Additional form fields appear.
          4. Fill in the remaining fields and click Save & Continue. The ADDITIONAL INFORMATION page appears.
          5. Either, supply additional information about your app and click Save and Continue.
              OR
              Click Skip this step.
              The Development Center home page is displayed. Your new app is listed under MY APPS.

Preparing your content for delivery to CBS Interactive

Whether you deliver your content via the web interface or programmatically via HTTP, you must prepare your content in the appropriate form. You must submit your content as either XML or CSV, depending on the required format for the content you are submitting. The exact format of the XML or CSV documents to submit are described below.

Your data must identify players, sports, positions, and stats categories using official CBS Interactive codes. The procedure for obtaining these codes is given below.

Preparing player outlooks data

The fields for player outlooks are as follows:

You must format your content as an XML file, as in the following example:

Preparing player updates data

The fields for player updates are as follows:

If submitting your updates using HTTP, you would format your content as an XML file, as in the following example:

Projections

The format of a projections submission is a CSV file, as in the following example, where the first row contains the field names, as described above, and the following rows contain the values, one record per row.

Baseball Pitching Categories that are Calculated (you can not upload these categories):

Baseball Batting Categories that are Calculated (you can not upload these categories):

Football Defensive Categories that are Calculated (you can not upload these categories):

Football Offensive Categories that are Calculated (you can not upload these categories):

Rankings (coming soon)

The ability to create Content Applications for Rankings will not be available for the launch of the Fantasy Platform, but will be coming soon.

OBTAINING CBS INTERACTVE ID CODES

To obtain the official CBS Interactive ID codes to identify players, sports, positions, and stats categories you must request the appropriate resources using the Fantasy Platform API. For more information on the Fantasy Platform API and the resources available from it, see the Fantasy Platform API documentation.

There is currently no HTML interface to the Fantasy Platform API. To get the codes you can either type the URL of the resource into a browser and copy or save the XML or JSON document it returns for the browser window, or you can call the API from your application code using a standard HTTP request method.

To access the Fantasy Platform API, you will need an access token. You must pass the access token to the Fantasy Platform API as a parameter to the URL. For example, to request the Positions resource for the sport of baseball, you would use the following URL:

http://api.cbssports.com/fantasy/positions?access_token=xyz123abc789&SPORT=baseball

Obtaining an access token

To obtain an access token make an HTTP POST request to the following URL:

https://api.cbssports.com/general/oauth/generate_token

with the following POST parameters:

app_id - The ID listed on the Application Detail page for this Application in the "About This App" box.

app_secret - The Secret listed on the Application Detail page for this Application in the "About This App" box.

response_format - (optional) The format you want the response in, either XML or JSON (defaults to XML).



For example:

      POST /general/oauth/generate_token HTTP/1.1
      Host: api.cbssports.com
      User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0
      Content-Length: 49
      Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
      app_id=myAppID&app_secret=myAppSecret


The response will contain your access token, or an error message, if your login fails.



XML response format:

JSON response format:

Possible Error Messages:

• missing required parameter: app_id
• missing required parameter: app_secret
• unable to validate app_id/app_secret

URLs for obtaining the ID codes

The URLs for the Players, Sports, Positions, and Stats Categories are as follows. See the Fantasy Platform API documentation for details on how to call each of these URLs.

Keeping up to date

With the exception of the player data, you should not need to retrieve the ID codes more than once per season. Due to player trades and other changes in status, the Players resource may change at any time during the season. To ensure that you are working with the most up-to-date information, you should request a new copy of the Players resource before preparing your content to submit to CBS Interactive.

Delivering your content using the web interface

To deliver your content using the web interface:

          1. Log on to the Developer Center.
          2. Under MY APPS on the DEVELOPMENT CENTER HOME page, choose your content app (the app you created under Creating a content app above).
          3. Click the Upload Content button near the top of the page (it's right above the About This App box).
          4. Set the Content Type field to the type of your content.
          5. Either, chose the file you want to upload in the Upload File field
              OR
              Cut and past the the file contents into the Content field.
          6. Press Submit. Your content will be validated and any errors or warnings will be displayed.

Delivering your content using HTTP

To deliver your content using HTTP, create an application to submit your content using the HTTP POST method. The POST method is supported by most programming and scripting languages, either natively or through a library. You must use the content type multipart/form-data.

Your content should be POSTed to the appropriate URL from the following list. Note that the access token must be included as a URL parameter named access_token.

The data you submit will be validated by the server when received. If the content is not valid, an error response code will be returned, along with a message detailing the validation errors.

If you submit several player updates or outlooks in a single transmission, they will be validated separately and the valid entries will be accepted. You will receive an error response code along with a message detailing which entries failed validation and why.

If your content submission is received and validated correctly, the API will return an HTTP status code of 200 OK.

Example POST message

Response format

The response format conforms to the following structure

If validate_only parameter is true:

If validate_only parameter is false and extra saved_records node is added to the summary specifying how many records were saved.:

A 200 response will always be returned with the exception of a 500 for missing parameters and a 404 response will be returned if your access_token refers to an invalid application.