Orders API

The Orders API provides endpoints for retrieving details of past orders created through the Archive and Tasking APIs, viewing their status, and downloading their delivered file resources.

The orders API consists of 3 endpoints:

• List orders, which will list all past and current orders on your account
• Get order, which will list the details and any associated resources of an order on your account
• Get resource, which requests download of a resource associated with an order, such as the imagery or its metadata

List Order History

Each Order entry is a JSON object with the following structure:

A full reference for the structure can be found in the reference section below

Get Order

Response Details

The /api/order/get endpoint returns a JSON encoded response consisting of a Detailed Order object, with the structure:

Response

A full reference for the order structure can be found in the reference section below

NOTE: the resources array will be omitted if the order is not yet in the completed state.

Resource Object

Completed orders will have at least one resource available to download that provides the requested imagery and its associated metadata.
Each Resource is an object like the following:

A full reference for the resource structure can be found in the reference section below

Get Resource

The Get Order Resource endpoint allows the download of a resource contents.

Order Object

The order object is a JSON object, that resembles:

Order Parameters

NOTE: the resources array will be omitted if there are no resources available for the order yet, or if the order is not complete.

Resource Object

Completed orders will have at least one resource available to download that provides the requested imagery.

Each Resource has structure like the following:

Resource Fields

Common Formats

Imagery and it’s metadata can be delivered in a variety of file formats, with the specific choice of format often varying with supplier.

The resource format field provides details about the format a given resource file is in, in the form of a MIME type.

The following is a summary of the most common formats returned by suppliers (with a few less common but important edge cases):

Legacy Resource Types

The type field is a legacy of past versions of the API.

It is maintained for legacy support, new users are recommended to use the new format and roles fields instead (see below).

The returned legacy types are

NOTE: not all suppliers return data in all types, and a single imagery request may contain multiple files of the same type (i.e. multiple img_tiff resources for different imaging bands on the satellite).

Integrity checking and checksums

Resources downloaded from the API, as with any message over the internet, may be altered or corrupted in transmission.
To aid in detecting such scenarios, a checksum is provided for all resource.

Each resources checksum consists of 2 parts, separated by a colon character (:)
The first part identifies the type of checksum, currently this is either MD5 of SHA1.
The second part is the base64 encoded hash of the resource body.

With this, downloaded resources can be similarly hashed and the value checked against the reported value of the resource.

Resource roles

Roles form a hierarchical tree describing the contents of a given resource

Roles should be read from start to end as being from least to most specific descriptor

The following details the common hierarchies of roles for most order resources:

“data”

Main product data for order.
Resources with this role are often the largest, and contain the primary data sources.

Data generally comes in 3 types

1. “raster” resources are traditional pixel images
2. “vector” resources are geographic features like points, polygons and features
3. “structured” resources are information in machine readable data formats like JSON

At this time, primary data is only returned with the raster, however vector and structured are reserved for future use.

> “raster”

Raster data is the primary deliverable for satellite imagery orders at this time.
These roles describe the type of raster data a given resource is.

>> “reflectance”

reflectance data is light reflected from the observed surface in the relevant band

Below this level roles become less hierarchical.

First describing the band(s) present in the file. If the file is a single band, the next role will be the common name for that band. If instead the resource contains multiple bands, it will have the multi-band role, followed by the list of band common names, in the order they appear in the resource/

Using the band common name the corresponding band information can be found in the metadata file with the bands role.

Some special case “pseudo” bands exist which may be found here in custom orders. These generally correspond to some standard processed raster band such as ndvi and similar. Despite being processing, they are included before other processing roles as they occupy a band in the file

Lastly, if there is processing of the imagery that may affect selection between several similar/related files, it is included as the final set of roles. This is generally large processing jobs which produce distinct artifacts, such as the following:

• • pansharpened for pansharpened imagery
  • orthorectified for orthorectified imagery
  • radiometrically-corrected for imagery that has undergone radiometric correction
  • mosaic for cases where a mosaic has been produced from multiple source images

Example: [“data”, “raster”, “reflectance”, “multi-band”, “red”, “green”, “blue”, “nir”, “pansharpened”]

>> “temperature”

Thermal reflectance data from a thermal sensor like landsat-8’s TIRS sensor.

Example: [“data”, “raster”, “temperature”]

>> “overview”

If the primary data format does not support internal overviews, they may be provided as a separate file identified by this role.

Example: [“data”, “raster”, “overview”]

>> “browse”

A full resolution image of the scene in a more compact format such as JPEG or PNG. These files may have lossy compression and/or compression artifacts and not represent the true data. They are intended as summary data when needed.

Example: [“data”, “raster”, “browse”]

>> “thumbnail”

A low resolution overview of the whole area of interest, generally “true color” or RGB if the image is has the relevant bands.

Example: [“data”, “raster”, “thumbnail”] > “vector”

Not supported at this time, but reserved for future use.

> “structured”

Not supported at this time, but reserved for future use

“metadata”

Descriptive metadata that provides information about the primary data.

Metadata generally comes in 3 types

1. “raster” resources are traditional pixel images, describing a value at each pixel location
2. “vector” resources are geographic features such as the polygon within which is valid data, or where the seams of adjacent tiles are
3. “structured” resources are information in machine readable data formats like JSON, such as general information about a capture; such as the date of capture, or how the scene was processed

> “raster”

Raster metadata often describes values for a scene that correspond to each pixel in the primary data.
such as whether each pixel is classified as being cloud cover, or the azimuth angle for each pixel.

Raster metadata files often fill multiple roles, with each band being a different piece of metadata.
As such, the subsequent roles form a list of what metadata is found in the file
i.e. a single resource may have the cloud, cloud-shadow and water-mask roles for a roles array of ["metadata", "raster", "cloud", "cloud-shadow", "water-mask"]

Note: effort is made to ensure that the role order matches a files band order, however this may not always be the case. Please let us know if you find any discrepancies

The descriptions below describe the meaning of each role for a given pixel in this metadata file

Example: [“metadata”, “raster”, “land-water”, “cloud”, “cloud-shadow”, “snow-ice”]

> “vector”

Vector metadata often describes details about the imagery, such as a summary of its location, or that of the larger scene it belongs to, how the imagery was built from tiled captures, or how the delivery files themselves are tiled.

>> “reference”

Reference vectors describe details about data location

It is followed by a role identifying what it is a reference for

Currently it may be a reference for either:

• • scene in which case it is the boundary for the whole source scene of the imagery, or
  • aoi to identify the location boundary of the delivered Area Of Interest

Example: [“metadata”, “vector”, “reference”, “aoi”]

>> “tiling”

Tiling metadata files describe how multiple data files in an order relate to each other in space

If present, these are often the preferred way to load the imagery, we they can provide metadata about the scene which prevents artifacts such as color balance issues.

These will often be found as GDAL Virtual Raster Table (.vrt) files, or TILE files (.til)

Example: [“metadata”, “vector”, “tiling”]

>> “scene-tiles”

Scene tiles describe the boundaries and tiling of source imagery that makes up a scene (such as when a satellite has multiple overlapping CCD’s)

Example: [“metadata”, “vector”, “scene-tiles”] > “structured”

Structured metadata files provide information about an order and its source scene
This information can provide more context for a scene, or information necessary to process it.

Example: [“metadata”, “structured”, “general”, “lineage”, “platform”, “bands”]

“license”

“license” is a special type, used exclusively for resources that provide either the license for data itself, or information about it.
The most common licenses are either text/plain or application/pdf files.

“custom”

“custom” is a special type, used exclusively for resources that are part of a custom order, for resources which do not fall into other established roles