Respond to a DSR

After you have setup your Server Webhook Integration or a Cron Job Integration to receive notifications for new data subject requests, you need to POST back to our API to indicate that the request was successfully completed. For most requests, this is a simple notification. In the case of an access request, you should respond with any data tied to that particular user.

End-to-End Encryption

In an access request, the data from your systems get bundled by Transcend for the end-user to download. The data is encrypted before arriving at Transcend by our encryption gateway, called Sombra. You don't need to know more than this, but if you're curious to learn about how Sombra works, you can read more here: Sombra (End-to-End Encryption).

API domain

Rather than integrating with an endpoint like api.transcend.io, you'll be using a URL specific to your domain. If you're self-hosting Sombra, then it is unique to your company. You can find this URL here. Otherwise, you will send requests to {{yourOrganizationSombraURL}}.

Uploading data for an Data Subject Access Request

For data you control in your databases, we expect your server to POST data back to your Sombra gateway, and that data will be included in the data download report sent back to the data subject.

A data silo contains a set of datapoints, which are categories of data on your server. You need to upload one file per datapoint, or report that datapoint as not found. You can upload to many datapoints at once with a JSON Bulk Upload, or you can upload to a single datapoint with a Single File Upload. JSON Bulk Upload only works for JSON data, whereas Single File Upload works for any file type such as an image or CSV.

JSON Bulk Upload

Endpoint reference: Respond to an access request (JSON bulk upload)

You can upload to many datapoints at once when the files uploaded to each datapoint is valid JSON.

POST {{yourOrganizationSombraURL}}/v1/data-silo

JSON Body Fields

Request Headers

Reporting values not found

For an integration to be considered "ready" for the user to download, Transcend expects each datapoint of an integration to receive data, or otherwise be reported as having no data found.

In a JSON Bulk Upload, you can indicate that a datapoint was not found by returning null, undefined, [], {}, or None. See Example A below.

You can also override the integration to be "ready" by passing the status: "READY" option. See Example B below.

const request = require('request');

/***
 For an integration with four datapoints:
 - name
 - score
 - interests
 - resume
 ***/

// Example A: Post all data including null values for non-existing fields
request.post('{{yourOrganizationSombraURL}}/v1/data-silo', {
  headers: {
    authorization: 'Bearer {{dataSiloApiKey}}',
    'x-sombra-authorization': 'Bearer {{sombraApiKey}}',
    'x-transcend-nonce': 'NONCE_FROM_WEBHOOK_REQUEST_HEADERS',
    'content-type': 'application/json',
  },
  body: {
    profiles: [
      {
        // this should be the same as extras.profile.identifier from the webhook body
        profileId: 'ben.farrell',
        profileData: {
          name: 'Ben Farrell', // these top-level keys are registered datapoints
          score: 3.8,
          interests: 'Privacy Tech',
          resume: null,
        },
      },
    ],
  },
  json: true,
});

// Example B: you can set `isCompleted=true` to fill in the remainder as null
request.post('{{yourOrganizationSombraURL}}/v1/data-silo', {
  headers: {
    authorization: 'Bearer {{dataSiloApiKey}}',
    'x-sombra-authorization': 'Bearer {{sombraApiKey}}',
    'x-transcend-nonce': 'NONCE_FROM_WEBHOOK_REQUEST_HEADERS',
    'content-type': 'application/json',
  },
  body: {
    profiles: [
      {
        // this should be the same as extras.profile.identifier from the webhook body
        profileId: 'ben.farrell',
        profileData: {
          name: 'Ben Farrell',
          score: 3.8,
          interests: 'Privacy Tech', // resume is missing
        },
      },
    ],
    status: 'READY', // request status is overridden as ready
  },
  json: true,
});

curl -X 'POST' {{yourOrganizationSombraURL}}/v1/data-silo
 -H "authorization: Bearer {{dataSiloApiKey}}"
 -H "x-sombra-authorization: Bearer {{sombraApiKey}}"
 -H "x-transcend-nonce: NONCE_FROM_WEBHOOK_REQUEST_HEADERS"
 -H "content-type: application/json"
 -d '{"profiles": [{ \
 "profileId": "ben.farrell", \
 "profileData": {"name": "Ben Farrell", "score": "3.8"}} \
]}'

Be sure to authenticate your request

Read more about authenticating with the Transcend API.

JSON Chunked File Upload

Endpoint reference: Respond to an access request (file upload)

In some cases, you may have a lot of data you need to upload for a particular datapoint. You may have some large table that has many of rows, i.e., an activities or audit table. You can page over your database and upload the data in chunks. Transcend will compose those chunks together into a single large file that will be streamed from Transcend's cloud to the data subject's file system.

POST {{yourOrganizationSombraURL}}/v1/datapoint-chunked

Request Headers

const request = require('request');

async function batchAndSendDataToTranscend(
  db, // your database or data store
  identifier, // the user identifier to query (extras.profile.identifier in webhook)
  nonce // from webhook headers
) {
  let hasMore = true;
  let offset = 0;
  const PAGE_SIZE = 1000;

  while (hasMore) {
    const data = await db.model('activity').findAll({
      where: { userId: identifier },
      order: [['createdAt', 'DESC']],
      limit: PAGE_SIZE,
      offset,
    });
    hasMore = data.length === PAGE_SIZE;
    offset += PAGE_SIZE;
    await request.post({
      // For US infrastructure, use multi-tenant.sombra.us.transcend.io
      url: 'https://multi-tenant.sombra.transcend.io/v1/datapoint-chunked',
      json: true,
      headers: {
        authorization: 'Bearer {{dataSiloApiKey}}',
        'x-sombra-authorization': 'Bearer {{sombraApiKey}}',
        'x-transcend-nonce': 'NONCE_FROM_WEBHOOK_REQUEST_HEADERS',
        'content-type': 'application/json',
      },
      body: {
        dataPointName: 'activities',
        data,
        isLastPage: !hasMore,
      },
    });
  }
}

Single File Upload

Endpoint reference: Respond to an access request (file stream upload)

You can also upload a file to a specific datapoint for a given profile.

POST {{yourOrganizationSombraURL}}/v1/datapoint

Request Headers

const request = require('request');
const { createReadStream } = require('fs');

const transcendRequest = request({
  url: '{{yourOrganizationSombraURL}}/v1/datapoint',
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    authorization: 'Bearer {{dataSiloApiKey}}',
    'x-sombra-authorization': 'Bearer {{sombraApiKey}}',
    'x-transcend-nonce': 'NONCE_FROM_WEBHOOK_REQUEST_HEADERS',
    'x-transcend-datapoint-name': 'profile_picture',
    // this should be the same as extras.profile.identifier from the webhook body
    'x-transcend-profile-id': 'ben_farrell',
  },
});

From File

createReadStream('path/to/profile_picture.jpg').pipe(transcendRequest);

From Amazon S3

import AWS from 'aws-sdk';

const s3 = new AWS.S3();
s3.getObject({ Bucket: 'my-bucket', Key: 'file-key' })
  .createReadStream()
  .on('error', (err) => console.error(err))
  .pipe(transcendRequest);

curl -X 'POST' {{yourOrganizationSombraURL}}/v1/data-silo
 -H "authorization: Bearer {{dataSiloApiKey}}"
 -H "x-sombra-authorization: Bearer {{sombraApiKey}}"
 -H "x-transcend-nonce: NONCE_FROM_WEBHOOK_REQUEST_HEADERS"
 -H 'x-transcend-datapoint-name: cool_video'
 -H 'x-transcend-profile-id: ben_farrell'
 -H "content-type: video/mp4"
 -d @frag_bunny.mp4

Mixed Example

In this example below, we are uploading a combination of table data from a database and files from a storage system like S3. In our scenario:

1. A database column, profile_picture refers to a key where an image file is stored on Amazon S3
2. Our database query does not return object keys where data is not found. Thus, some datapoints are not being reported to Transcend (see: Reporting Values Not Found). We set the explicit 'status': 'READY' flag to indicate the unreported datapoints have no data found.

// Amazon sdk used to connect to s3
import AWS from 'aws-sdk';

// HTTP request library
const request = require('request-promise');

// Verify jwts
const jwt = require('jsonwebtoken');

const s3 = new AWS.S3();

// Your custom db implementation
const db = require('./db');

// Store your secrets somewhere secure
const TRANSCEND_AUTH = {
  authorization: 'Bearer DATA_SILO_API_KEY',
  'x-sombra-authorization': 'Bearer SOMBRA_API_KEY',
};

/**
 * Resolve the datapoints for a given user
 *
 * @param coreIdentifier - The id of the user
 * @param nonce - The nonce we send you in the webhook,
 *                used to map your response back to the datapoint metadata
 * @returns A promise that resolves the access request back to Transcend
 */
async function performAccessRequest(profileIdentifier, nonce) {
  // Lookup the user in the db
  const user = db.get('user').byId(profileIdentifier);

  // Split off profile picture from remaining data
  const { profile_picture, ...remainingUser } = user;

  // First we post the profile picture jpeg image
  await s3
    .getObject({ Bucket: 'my-bucket', Key: profilePicture })
    .createReadStream()
    .on('error', (err) => console.error(err))
    .pipe(
      request({
        // For US infrastructure, use multi-tenant.sombra.us.transcend.io
        baseUrl: 'https://multi-tenant.sombra.transcend.io',
        uri: '/v1/datapoint',
        method: 'POST',
        headers: {
          ...TRANSCEND_AUTH,
          'x-transcend-nonce': nonce,
          'x-transcend-datapoint-name': 'profile_picture',
          'x-transcend-profile-id': profileIdentifier,
          'content-type': 'image/jpeg', // indicate the file type
        },
      })
    );

  // Only after the first request completes do we send the remaining
  await request.post({
    // For US infrastructure, use multi-tenant.sombra.us.transcend.io
    baseUrl: 'https://multi-tenant.sombra.transcend.io',
    uri: '/v1/data-silo',
    headers: {
      ...TRANSCEND_AUTH,
      'x-transcend-nonce': nonce,
      'content-type': 'application/json',
    },
    body: {
      profiles: [
        {
          // same as extras.profile.identifier from webhook body
          profileId: profileIdentifier,
          profileData: remainingUser,
        },
      ],
      // Our db does not return undefined values so we explicitly indicate completion
      status: 'READY',
    },
    json: true,
  });
}

Adding New Datapoints

At some point the data you collect may change and you'll want to add a new datapoint so you can upload new types of files to the download report. The easiest way to do this is to include a new unique key in the "profileData” object see: JSON Bulk Upload. We will automatically detect when your integration starts responding with new data types, and prompt the maintainer of that integration to add a description and categorization of that datapoint, as well as make the final call as to whether that datapoint should be shown in the download report.

Fulfill an Erasure Request (DSER) or Opt Out Request

Endpoint reference: Respond to an erasure request

When a DSER or opt out is received, Transcend sends your server a webhook notification, and your server then deletes data or opts out a data subject from your own databases. When your server is done, it should notify Transcend about which profiles were erased or modified.

PUT {{yourOrganizationSombraURL}}/v1/data-silo

JSON Body Fields

Request Headers

const request = require('request');

request.put('{{yourOrganizationSombraURL}}/v1/data-silo', {
  headers: {
    Authorization: '{{dataSiloApiKey}}',
  },
  body: {
    profiles: [
      // Profiles without the data
      {
        // this should be the same as extras.profile.identifier from the webhook
        profileId: 'ben.farrell',
      },
    ],
  },
  json: true,
});

Additional Status Codes

Handling Duplicate Erasure Requests

Occasionally, there may be a reason that a webhook for an ERASURE request has to be re-attempted. Transcend will automatically re-send webhooks every day when your server has not reported back a response. When an ERASURE webhook is re-sent after you have successfully erased that person's account, you may no longer be able to look them up by their coreIdentifier. It is important that your server responds back to the webhook with HTTP status code 204, indicating that no user was found and thus no ERASURE needs to be performed again. Not you can respond back to the webhook directly with a 204 instead of a 200. You do not need to follow up with another POST request.