Endpoint Specification

This article provides the specification for the direct HTTP endpoint, which is used in any application that sends HTTP requests.

Tealium Collect URL

Tealium Collect is located at the following root URL: 

https://collect.tealiumiq.com/event

Sessions are determined based on the Visit scope attribute property.

Visitor ID Attribute

If you are using Tealium AudienceStream you must pass a known visitor ID attribute (user identifier) with each tracking call, such as email_address or login_id.

If the events do not contain a visitor ID attribute then each event generates a new visit and visitor, making stitching not possible. This is important if using the Collect API on a web platform where you might be tracking anonymous users.

A visitor ID attribute is also needed if you are using Tealium EventStream and need to provide an ID to a vendor connector.

Learn more about the visitor ID attribute.

Anonymous ID

The tealium_visitor_id attribute is an anonymous ID used by AudienceStream to associate a visitor between events and visits.  Depending on your usage of the Collect API, use one of the following approaches:

Known Visitors
(Required for AudienceStream, recommended for EventStream)
When tracking events for a known visitor (when a value exists for a visitor ID attribute such as email_address), include the known visitor ID attribute and a hash of that value in the tealium_visitor_id parameter.

{
    "tealium_account"    : "ACCOUNT",
    "tealium_profile"    : "PROFILE",
    "tealium_event"      : "EVENT_NAME",
    "email_address"      : "EMAIL_ADDRESS",
    "tealium_visitor_id" : "VISITOR_ID"
}

Anonymous Visitors
(Required for AudienceStream)
When tracking events for an anonymous visitor from a website (without a known ID), then the value of the tealium_visitor_id needs to match the value in the utag_main_v_id cookie.

Learn more about the built-in variables from utag.js.

Methods

GET

The GET method is used to request data from a specified resource. It passes data using key-value pairs in the query string of the endpoint, and returns a 1x1 transparent GIF to make it compatible with HTML-based implementations.

Example using curl:

curl -i -X GET "https://collect.tealiumiq.com/event?tealium_account={ACCOUNT}&tealium_profile={PROFILE}&tealium_event=user_login&email_address=user@example.com" 

POST

The POST method is used to send data to a server to create/update a resource. It supports JSON payloads where the request header must be set to Content-Type: application/json and the payload must be formatted as a valid JSON string. 

Example of user_login event:

{
    "tealium_account"   : "ACCOUNT",
    "tealium_profile"   : "PROFILE",
    "tealium_event"     : "EVENT_NAME",
    "email_address"     : "EMAIL_ADDRESS"
}

Example using curl:

curl -X POST -H 'Content-type: application/json'
--data '{"tealium_account":"{ACCOUNT}","tealium_profile":"{PROFILE}","tealium_event":"user_login","email_address":"user@example.com"}'
https://collect.tealiumiq.com/event

Status Codes

The following table summarizes Tealium’s HTTP response status codes:

The 400 Bad Request status code occurs when at least of the following is true:

• The JSON key contains a period, is invalid, or exceeds 1MB in size
• The file-type parameter contains a value other than “json” or “javascript”
• The combination of account, profile, and datalayer_id exceeds 250 characters in length, or contains restricted characters
• tealium_account or tealium_profile is missing, or contains typographical errors
• The request body is empty

The following is an example of a 400 Bad Request response, shown in the X-Error header, when the required tealium_account or tealium_profile parameter values are missing:

> GET /event?tealium_account=jentest-as&tealium_profile=&tealium_visitor_id=sendgeteventhttps@testing.com&tealium_datasource=utc2cj&customer_city=Honolulu&customer_state=Hawaii&Flag=true&Number=45&String=ascent&String_Array=[hello,howareyou,whatsup,yoyoyo]&Number_Array=[2.222,3.000,19.12,28.3]&Flag_Array=[true,false,false,true]&Combo_Array=[1,salutations,2324,world,22jjfssl]&Array_of_Array=[[1,2,3],heyworld]&myvariable=unicorns HTTP/1.1
> Host: qa21-collect.tealiumiq.com
> User-Agent: curl/7.54.0
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
< Cache-Control: no-transform,private,no-cache,no-store,max-age=0,s-maxage=0
< Content-Type: application/json
< Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2019 17:10:51 GMT
< Expires: Wed, 23 Oct 2019 17:10:51 GMT
< P3P: policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml", CP="NOI DSP COR NID CUR ADM DEV OUR BUS"
< Pragma: no-cache
< Vary: Origin
< X-Error: Missing required tealium_account or tealium_profile param value
< X-Region: us-east-1
< X-ServerID: uconnect_i-9a157d19
< X-ULVer: 1.0.331-SNAPSHOT
< X-UUID: d4fc78d1-8204-412c-a6cb-57869d2370a7
< Content-Length: 0
< Connection: keep-alive

Examples

HTML Example

Tealium Collect is referenced in an <img> tag within your HTML. Due to browser caching it’s important to include a cache buster, an additional parameter that contains a randomly generated value, as shown in the following example:

var cb=Math.random()*100000000000;

This variable is added to the query string of the Tealium Collect pixel:

<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="//collect.tealiumiq.com/event?tealium_account={ACCOUNT}&tealium_profile={PROFILE}&tealium_event=user_login&email_address=user@example.com&cb=' + cb + '"/>

JavaScript Example

Tealium Collect supports cross-domain requests, allowing you to send a POST from your website to our domain, as shown in the following example:

var event = {
    "tealium_account" : "ACCOUNT",
    "tealium_profile" : "PROFILE",
    "tealium_event"   : "EVENT_NAME",
    "email_address"   : "EMAIL_ADDRESS"};
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open("POST", "https://collect.tealiumiq.com/event");
xhr.send(JSON.stringify(event));

The Response Headers include the following:  

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: [http://your_domain.com](http://your_domain.com)