REST API

POST /graph/silos

Personalized and Customizable Carousels of Data.

POST https://api.mediahound.net/graph/silos

Overview

Imagine you want to present your Users with carousels of content, each highlighting different facets of personalized and recommended content.

Object Types

As illustrated, the User is shown 3 rows of suggestions. Each row is one Silo:

The first displays Movie and ShowSeries recommendations based on the User's Likes.
The second makes personalized Movie suggestions that are currently available to watch on a few Sources.
The third displays Movies from a Graph Lens -- a highly specific grouping of movies with a descriptive title like "B-Movie Comedies Set in Space".

Silos

Silos empower you to make an endless stream of carousels that engage your Users with highly specific and targeted content. The response looks like a two dimensional array of objects, where each of the inner arrays represents one cohesive set of Content (i.e., Horror Comedies on Netflix Instant).

Silos have a learning curve. Before you dive into how to create Silos, you must be comfortable working with Factors, Filters, and Components from our Hound Query Language. Silos build heavily on HQL and internally utilize the underlying services of Relate, Explore and Lookup.

The silo endpoint allows you to specify the types of silos that you would like to see on a page. Below we will break down the specific configurations that are available.

Types of Silos

Type	Description
Recommended For You	Classic Recommendations based off all Seed Data
Explore	Based on Popularity - does not use Seed Data
Based On Item	Recommendations based heavily on 1 item
Graph Lens	Curated sets of 3 traits that go well together recommended for the user.
Explore Graph Lens	Curated sets of 3 traits that go well together sorted by popularity
Content	Recommendations based on a curated set of titles
Collection	Inject an editorial collection of content hand-generated by your editorial team

Silos are constructed as JSON and passed into the silos endpoint as the POST body. The Silos Language inherits some things from Factors, Filters, and Components, so go read-up if you're unfamiliar.

HQL JSON Parameters

Silos does not use the page parameter to paginate through silos. The Paging Info Object comes with a next attribute that has a body. This body can be used as a request body to get the "next page" of silos.

Property	Description
ids	List of content MHIDs that the user had a positive affinity for
filters	Required object. See Filters. Blueprint level filters override the global filters.
components	Optional Array. See Components.
pageSize	Optional Integer. Number of silos to be returned. See the Paging Info Object.
siloPageSize	Number of titles per silo. See the Paging Info Object.
blueprints	List of Blueprints of the types of silos you would like returned.

Blueprint

Blueprints describe how to generate each of the silos in the returned result. You can mix and match blueprints and specify how they should be positioned in the response body and how they should repeat.

Property	Description
type	The type of silo that you want to generate. One of: `RecommendedForYou`, `Explore`, `BasedOnItem`, `GraphLens`, `ExploreGraphLens`, `Content`, `Collection`.
positions	Static indexes that the silo should appear in. Array of integers. Can NOT be used with `probability`.
probability	How likely it should be for this silo to appear in one of the remaining slots. Can NOT be used with `positions`.
filters	Blueprint specific filters. See Filters.
params	Type-specific blueprint parameters.

Blueprint Params

Each Blueprint type has a different set of params that control it.

Recommended For You

Property	Description	Type	Example
name	Title for the Silo	String	`Movies for You`

Explore

Property	Description	Type	Example
name	Title for the Silo	String	`Trending Movies`

Based On Item

Property	Description	Type	Example
nameGenerator	Title for the Silo that injects seed data in place of “\$1”	String	`Because You Watched $1`

Explore Graph Lens

Property	Description	Type	Examle
nameGenerator	Title for the Silo that injects seed data in place of “\$1”	String	`Because You Watched $1`

Graph Lens

No params.

Example One

Request

Let's say you would like to request 4 silos.

1 "RecommendedForYou" silo
3 "BasedOnItem" silos

{
  "ids": [
    "mhmovUdrcjcpagFVWeBWRYP9QzPz5FHzGInuF7i3AWaN",
    "mhmovXOJQTjfw9gVJzNWZMUnH35jZITMYkzwibRLqxon",
    "mhmovwLXNsSIcooIQgitkcBT5syRQ2Q5bykjOYkeTcLN"
  ],
  "components": [
    {
      "name": "metadata"
    }
  ],
  "blueprints": [
    {
      "type": "RecommendedForYou",
      "params": {
        "name": "Movies For You"
      },
      "filters": {
        "returnType": {
          "$eq": "Movie"
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "type": "BasedOnItem",
      "params": {
        "nameGenerator": "Because you liked $1"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Response

The response will be a bit large so let's break it up to simplify.

Silos returns an array of silos. Each silo has a title, a Paging Info Object, and an array of Object Context Pairs.

{
  "silos": [
    {
      "content": OBJECT_CONTEXT_PAIR[],
      "pagingInfo": PAGING_INFO_OBJECT,
      "title": "Movies For You"
    },
    {
      "content": OBJECT_CONTEXT_PAIR[],
      "pagingInfo": PAGING_INFO_OBJECT,
      "title": "Because you liked Toy Story"
    },
    {
      "content": OBJECT_CONTEXT_PAIR[],
      "pagingInfo": PAGING_INFO_OBJECT,
      "title": "Because you liked Cars 2"
    },
    {
      "content": OBJECT_CONTEXT_PAIR[],
      "pagingInfo": PAGING_INFO_OBJECT,
      "title": "Because you liked Shrek"
    }
  ],
  "pagingInfo": PAGING_INFO_OBJECT
}

. In this case object will contain movie metadata.

"silos": [
    {
      "content": [
        {
          "object": {
            "mhid": "mhmovvLNsiON72F3up5CX7boQjhPmxmo2pwxfitMZmQW",
            "name": "Aladdin",
            "description": "A peasant with a heart of gold stumbles upon a garrulous genie, voiced by Robin Williams, who grants him wishes. With the help of the genie and a magic carpet, he sets off to impress a beautiful princess.",
            "altId": "mhmov-aladdin",
            "releaseDate": 722649600
          }
        },
        ...
      ],
      "pagingInfo": PAGING_INFO_OBJECT,
      "title": "Movies For You"
    },
    ...
  ],