Passthrough API

The Passthrough API allows you to access SaaS endpoints through your existing connections, even if those endpoints aren't explicitly supported in our unified models. Think of it as a way to "pass through" your API requests directly to the third-party platform while still leveraging Unified.to's connection management and authentication handling.

When to use Passthrough

Most implementations don't need Passthrough. It's for edge cases where the endpoint you need isn't part of the unified API. Before building on Passthrough, contact us: most gaps can be closed by adding the capability to the unified API.

If you only need vendor fields that aren't in the unified data model, use raw fields or the Metadata API instead. See Choosing how to access vendor-specific data.

If you need a record's original vendor ID for a Passthrough call, it's available in raw.__id.

How it works

When you make a Passthrough API request:

1. You send your request to Unified.to's Passthrough endpoint, specifying:
   • The connection ID for the integration you want to access
   • The platform-specific API path you want to call
   • Any HTTP method, headers, query parameters, or body data needed
2. Unified.to handles:
   • Authentication with the platform using your stored connection credentials
   • Routing your request to the correct platform API endpoint
3. The SaaS application processes your request and sends back a response
4. Unified.to forwards the response back to you without modification

Path construction

The path you provide should be relative to the platform's base API URL. For example:

• If the full endpoint URL is https://api.vendor.com/v2/users
• You would specify v2/users as the path

You can find the base URL for each integration under the Feature Support > Passthrough tab on app.unified.to/integrations (click through to the integration to see it).

Headers, parameters, and payloads

• You can send any platform-specific headers your request needs, such as Content-Type
• For write operations, you can include a payload in the request
• Query parameters can be included in the path or as separate parameters
• All headers from the response are passed back to you
• There is only one reserved URL parameter, and that is __domain. Use it to override the default API URL for that integration.

Response handling

Unlike Unified.to's standard endpoints which return normalized data, Passthrough API responses contain raw data. This means:

• Response formats will vary between platforms
• You'll need to handle platform-specific data structures
• Error formats will be platform-specific