Using the Travel Partner 2.0 APIs

Version 2.0 of the Travel Partner Application Programming Interface (API) is a collection of RESTful services that let you programmatically access bidding, pricing, hotel, and diagnostic reporting data about your Hotel Prices accounts. The services make it easier to track properties and, if you participate in bidding, to submit bids and assess the performance of your account.

API summary

The Travel Partner API endpoints uses RESTful syntax via HTTPS calls. The base URL for all API 2.0 requests is:

https://www.googleapis.com/travelpartner/v2.0/account_id

The following table summarizes the API endpoints for the Travel Partner API 2.0:

API Name Endpoint Available to Description
Feed Status API /feed_status Hotel Ads & Hotel Prices Gets a report of your feeds, including errors and warnings that Google encountered when processing those feeds.
Hotels API /hotels Hotel Ads & Hotel Prices Lists properties that are in your Hotel List Feed, including those that are over-clustered or have other data quality issues.
Prices API /prices Hotel Ads & Hotel Prices Returns itineraries and their associated prices for your properties.

Migrating from 1.x to 2.0

When moving your API tools from versions 1.2 or earlier to 2.0, keep the following in mind:

What's changed:

  • All requests require your account ID in the query path. The account ID can be the ID of a master or sub account.
  • To submit bids for hotels in a sub account, you must use the Bids 2.0 API.

  • The endpoints have changed to better represent RESTful services. For example:

    Do this (2.0): 

    https://www.googleapis.com/travelpartner/v2.0/account_id/reports

    Not this (1.x): 

    https://www.googleapis.com/travelpartner/v1.2/reports/get
  • Some APIs support write operations. These include:
    • Bids API: You can set bids at the account default, Hotel Group, or individual hotel level.
    • Budgets API: You can set an account's daily spending cap and max bid cap.
    • Groups API: You can create new Hotel Groups, and add and remove hotels to and from those groups.

What hasn't changed:

  • The way that you authenticate against the APIs is the same from 1.2 to 2.0. You still use OAuth 2.0.
  • You can still pass nextrow and maxresults parameters in the query.

Deprecation

Google supports at least the two most recent API versions at any given time. When a new version is released, the version that is now two releases back will be deprecated and scheduled for sunsetting.

  • Deprecated indicates that the version of the API will continue to function as expected, but may not be updated with new features or bug fixes. In addition, when a version is deprecated, a sunset date is determined.
  • Sunsetted indicates that the version of the API is removed and is no longer available. The minimum amount of time between deprecation and sunsetting is 3 months.

The following table shows the current schedule of API versions, as well as expected deprecation and sunset dates:

Version Deprecation Date Sunset Date
v2.0 N/A N/A
v1.2 N/A N/A
v1.1 June 2016 October 2016
v1.0 April 2015 October 2015

Improving performance with partial responses

The Hotels APIs support a simple syntax that you can use to get partial responses with your API calls. You do this by specifying the names of the objects that you want with the fields query string parameter.

For example, rather than getting the entire response for a Bids API request, you can get just the bids objects, as the following example shows:

api_request_url/bids?fields=bids

The fields parameter supports the following syntax:

  • Use "/" separators to select objects that are nested. The following example gets base_bid_source which is nested within bids:

    api_request_url/bids?fields=bids/base_bid_source
  • Get multiple objects using commas. The following example gets base_bid_source which is nested within bids, and multiplier_source which is also nested within bids:

    api_request_url/bids?fields=bids/base_bid_source,bids/multiplier_source
  • Use wildcard characters (*) to select all objects. The following example gets all objects nested in bids/bid/multipliers:

    api_request_url/bids?fields=bids/bid/multipliers/*
  • Specify sub-selections with "()". The following example gets the base_bid_source, multiplier_source, and the bid/multipliers objects for each item in the bids array:

    api_request_url/bids?fields=bids(base_bid_source,multiplier_source,bid/multipliers)

Using offsets

When a set of data returned by the Travel Partner API is large enough, you must use an offset to page through the results. You do this with the nextrow query string parameter, as the following example shows:

https://www.googleapis.com/travelpartner/v2.0/420042/hotels?nextrow=131073

The nextrow parameter specifies an offset value which is a unique token that you pass to the API on your second and subsequent requests. When you include nextrow in your query, the Travel Partner API applies it to the request and gives you the next set of results, starting with the value of nextrow.

The value of nextrow is not an integer that simply defines an index offset. Instead, it is a unique identifier that the Travel Partner API uses to determine which set of results to use. As a result, your first request should never include this parameter. Responses that are incomplete will have NEXTROW:value as the first line in each response; for example:

NEXTROW: 131073

To offset your next request, you extract the value of NEXTROW from the response body and set it as the value of the nextrow query string parameter in your next request.

Authentication

To access the Travel Partner API, clients must authenticate using OAuth2 authentication.

For an example application and additional information about using OAuth to connect to the Travel Partner API, see API Authentication.

Specifying an account

All endpoints take an account ID in the URL. The account ID can be a parent account or a sub account. If it is a parent account, then all data from that account's sub accounts is aggregated and included in the response.

If you do not know your account ID, you can use the Account Info view on the Account tab in the Console. For more information, see Viewing Sub Account Information.