Custom Events and Fields
The goal of sending custom events and fields is to
- Capture key events and data points not covered by our reserved events and fields.
- Give your fraud prediction model more ways to distinguish between the traits and behaviors of good and bad users so that it can more accurately find fraudsters.
- Give your fraud prediction model more ways to distinguish between items,
services, posts, etc, so that it can determine
- which are more attractive to fraudsters
- which are more likely created by fraudsters
- Give your fraud team additional, useful ways to sort through users in the console.
For example, let's say you have a voice over IP phone business, and you want to record when a user makes a
call. You can create a custom event called make_call as shown.
Three fields are required in custom events:
$type, $api_key, and the $user_id or $session_id which identifies the user
taking the action.
// A hypothetical custom event recording a call made
// using a number of formatted fields
{
"$type" : "make_call",
"$api_key" : "YOUR_API_KEY",
"$user_id" : "billy_jones_301",
"recipient_user_id" : "marylee819",
"call_duration" : 4428
}
import sift
client = sift.Client(api_key='{apiKey}', account_id='{accountId}')
# A hypothetical custom event recording a call made
# using a number of formatted fields
properties = {
"$user_id" : "billy_jones_301",
"recipient_user_id" : "marylee819",
"call_duration" : 4428
}
response = client.track("make_call", properties)
require "sift"
client = Sift::Client.new(:api_key => "YOUR_API_KEY")
# A hypothetical custom event recording a call made
# using a number of formatted fields
properties = {
"$user_id" => "billy_jones_301",
"recipient_user_id" => "marylee819",
"call_duration" => 4428
}
response = client.track("make_call", properties)
require 'sift-php/lib/Services_JSON-1.0.3/JSON.php';
require 'sift-php/lib/SiftRequest.php';
require 'sift-php/lib/SiftResponse.php';
require 'sift-php/lib/SiftClient.php';
require 'sift-php/lib/Sift.php';
$client = new SiftClient(array('api_key' => 'YOUR_API_KEY'));
// Sample $link_session_to_user event
$properties = array(
'$user_id' => 'billy_jones_301',
'recipient_user_id' => 'marylee819',
'call_duration' => 4428
);
$response = $client->track('make_call', $properties);
import com.siftscience.SiftClient;
import com.siftscience.EventRequest;
import com.siftscience.model.CustomEventFieldSet;
SiftClient client = new SiftClient("YOUR_API_KEY");
EventRequest request = client.buildRequest(new CustomEventFieldSet()
.setUserId("billy_jones_301")
.setEventType("make_call")
.setCustomField("recipient_user_id", "marylee819")
.setCustomField("call_duration", 4428)
);
EventResponse response;
try {
response = request.send();
} catch (SiftException e) {
System.out.println(e.getApiErrorMessage());
return;
}
response.isOk(); // true
Naming Custom Events
In general, events sent to our Events API should
describe a particular action taken by a user. We encourage starting the name of your custom events
with a verb in present tense, e.g. add_new_connection or create_new_location.
Custom event names may only include alphanumeric characters and _.
We encouage you to adopt our naming conventions in creating custom event and custom field names. We use lower case and snake_case for all event and field names.
Special field suffixes
Send fields using our reserved suffixes when possible to take advantage of additional analysis.