Public Clickout API
The Public Clickout endpoint takes in an affiliate link with user data. This data gets registered in our database as a click and a modified affiliate URL with a tracking value added into the Sub ID will be returned. This modified URL has to be used for the redirect in order to correctly attribute the click with sale(s). This public endpoint is IP throttled to 30 requests per minute.
https://wct-1.com/api/public/v1/clickout Request
Header
Content-Type: application/json
Body Parameters
String | URL-encode according to RFC 3986
Required
Required
The Affiliate URL which will be used to direct the user to it
String | URL-encode according to RFC 3986
Optional
Required
The URL where the user clicked out from (to get this value you could use a cookie approach to find the previous URL, there’s an example on this underneath)
String | URL-encode according to RFC 3986
Optional
Optional
The URL where the user is redirected from
String
Optional
Recommended
This is the Google Analytics cookie called _ga
String
Optional
Required
This is the We Can Track cookie set by our Javascript Tag called _wctrck
JSON
Optional
Optional
Custom data that needs to be attached with the clickout
String
Optional
Optional
Custom indexed 1 to 5 to be used on complex queries.
String (case insensitive)
Optional
Optional
This ID needs to reference back to a click in your database. Currently this is a custom functionality, please reach out to us to make use of this parameter. Note: please make sure you keep this ID as short as possible.
String
Optional
Optional
Define a click ID placeholder variable through which you can control where exactly our click ID should be placed within the URL you provide us. This can be helpful for (affiliate) URLs that are currently not recognised by our system due to unknown link pattern. If the placeholder field is available in the request, our system will user the placeholder functionality and not any link patterns provided in the system. If no placeholder field is given in the request it will use the available link patterns from our system.
Body example
{
"affiliate_url" : "https%3A%2F%2Fwww.awin1.com%2Fcread.php%3Fawinmid%3DXXXX%26awinaffid%3DXXXXX%26clickref%3DXXXXX",
"clickout_url" : "https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fpage",
"_ga" : "GA1.2.XXXXXX.XXXXXX",
"_wctrck" : "9jInZ4YnZuZlPjx...",
"metadata" : {
"deal_id" : 123,
"deal_title" : "title",
"anything" : "anything"
},
"custom_index_1" : "index1",
"custom_index_2" : "index2",
"user_click_reference" : "CLICK_ID_1234"
}
Response
Header
Content-Type: application/json
X-RateLimit-Limit: 30
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 29
200 Body - OK
The affiliate_url attribute will contain the modified affiliate URL which will be needed to direct the user to it.
{
"affiliate_url": "https%3A%2F%2Fwww.awin1.com%2Fcread.php%3Fawinmid%3DXXXX%26awinaffid%3DXXXXX%26clickref%3DXXXXXWCT191123233005gxs9q"
}
400 Body - Errors
{
"error": "Error Message"
}
299 Body - Warnings
These requests are successful but currently failing because of some user configuration, the warning message will explain what to do.
{
"warning": "Warning message"
}
Javascript code example
- Caution do not copy paste it in production as is, it needs modification. Furthermore make sure to make the script backwards compatible as it contains ECMAScript 2015+ this can be done with with Babel.
This is an extensive example of how to implement this API. In the payload variable is where you would fill in the body parameters. The function redirectToAffiliateURL takes in the payload and a timeout parameter. With the timeout parameter you may decide when to fallback to the original affiliate URL. Please keep in mind that the timeout varies per user primarily due to internet speed, 3 seconds seems to cover most cases.
/*---- HELPER FUNCTIONS ----*/
function getCookie(name) {
let cookie = {};
document.cookie.split(';').forEach(function(el) {
let [k,v] = el.split('=');
cookie[k.trim()] = v;
})
return cookie[name];
}
function setCookie(variable, value, expires_seconds) {
var d = new Date();
d = new Date(d.getTime() + 1000 * expires_seconds);
document.cookie = variable + '=' + value + '; expires=' + d.toGMTString() + ';';
}
// RFC 3986 Compatible
function fixedEncodeURIComponent(str) {
return encodeURIComponent(str).replace(/[!'()*]/g, function(c) {
return '%' + c.charCodeAt(0).toString(16);
});
}
/*--------------------------*/
function redirectToAffiliateURL(payload, timeoutMs) {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
// Set timeout timer
let timer = setTimeout(
() => reject(new Error('Request timed out')),
timeoutMs
);
fetch('https://wct-1.com/api/public/v1/clickout', {
method: 'POST',
headers: {'Content-Type': 'application/json'},
body: JSON.stringify(payload)
}).then(
response => resolve(response),
err => reject(err)
).finally(() => clearTimeout(timer));
})
}
let payload = {
'uid' : 'xxxxxx',//your user ID
'affiliate_url' : fixedEncodeURIComponent('https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=12116&awinaffid=334243&p=https://www.mcdrogerie.ch/aktionen'),
'redirect_url' : fixedEncodeURIComponent(window.location.href),
'clickout_url' : getCookie("previousUrl"),// explained at (1)
'_ga' : getCookie("_ga"),
'_wctrck' : getCookie("_wctrck"),
'metadata' : {'key':'value'},
'custom_index_1' : 223,
'custom_index_2' : 'male'
};
// redirect to affiliate URL, if the loading takes more than 3 seconds then redirect to payload.affiliate_url
redirectToAffiliateURL(payload, 3000).then((response) => {
if (!response.ok) {
throw new Error('Invalid request');
} else {
response.json().then(function(data) {
if ('affiliate_url' in data) {
window.location.replace(decodeURIComponent(data.affiliate_url));
} else {
throw new Error('Could not find affiliate url in response');
}
})
}
}).catch(function(err) {
console.log('failed.. falling back', err);
// fallback to original redirect
window.location.replace(payload.affiliate_url);
});
// (1) in this example we will be using the cookie as a way to log the previousUrl and set that as the clickout URL.
setCookie("previousUrl", window.location.href, {path:"/"});
