Review Entity

The review entity contains information about a single dealer review posted by a DealerRater user. The review may be positive or negative, it includes individual category ratings, dealer employees may by optionally tagged, etc. Find below a sample review entity in XML format (they may also be returned in JSON format, but the translation should be straightforward). Each attribute of the review is also detailed below.

Sample Review XML


<Review>
    <DateActive>2012-08-15T11:53:29Z</DateActive>
    <DateEntered>2012-08-15T11:49:36Z</DateEntered>
    <DateLastModified>2012-08-15T11:49:36Z</DateLastModified>
    <DealerId>15322</DealerId>
    <Department>SALES_USED</Department>
    <ManufacturerId>20</ManufacturerId>
    <Messages>
        <Message>
            <Content>The dealer can respond publicly here.</Content>
            <DateEntered>2014-12-16T22:03:20</DateEntered>
            <From>DEALER</From>
            <FromName>Dealer Name</FromName>
            <Public>true</Public>
        </Message>
    </Messages>
    <EmployeeNames/>
    <Employees>
        <Employee>...</Employee>
        <Employee>...</Employee>
        <Employee>...</Employee>
    </Employees>
    <TaggedEmployees>
        <TaggedEmployee>...</TaggedEmployee>
        <TaggedEmployee>...</TaggedEmployee>
        <TaggedEmployee>...</TaggedEmployee>
    </TaggedEmployees>
    <Id>772328</Id>
    <Rating/>
    <Ratings>
        <Rating>
            <Name>Overall</Name>
            <Value>5</Value>
        </Rating>
        <Rating>
            <Name>CustomerService</Name>
            <Value>4</Value>
        </Rating>
        <Rating>
            <Name>BuyingProcess</Name>
            <Value>4</Value>
        </Rating>
        <Rating>
            <Name>QualityOfWork</Name>
            <Value>5</Value>
        </Rating>
        <Rating>
            <Name>Facilities</Name>
            <Value>3</Value>
        </Rating>
    </Ratings>
    <RecommendDealer>true</RecommendDealer>
    <ReviewTitle>Great service!</ReviewTitle>
    <ReviewContent>
    Bob was friendly, listened to what we were looking for and provided great service. We would 
    come here again and have already recommended it to people.
  </ReviewContent>
    <UserId>747120</UserId>
    <UserName>landr</UserName>
</Review>

Review Attributes

Attribute	Type	Description
Id	int	The review's primary key. Used to uniquely identify a review in the system.
DealerId	int	The primary key of the dealer to which this review was posted on.
UserId	int	The primary key of the DealerRater user that posted the review.
UserName	string	The DealerRater user name for the user that wrote the review (the user name associated with the given UserId).
UserEmailAddress	string	When creating a new review, you must provide the email address of the user that originally authored the content. We use this email address to register a new user in our system that "owns" or is considered the "reviewer" of the review being created. If the given email address is already associated with a user in our system, the new review will be associated with the pre-existing account.
UserIpAddress	string	The IP address of the user that authored the review. This is used for internal auditing only.
Department	Enumeration	Defines the department the review was written against. Valid values include SALES¹, SALES_NEW, SALES_USED, SERVICE, LEASE_NEW and LEASE_USED.
ManufacturerId ²	int	The ID of the manufacturer the review was written for (Ford, Honda, etc).
Messages	Array	This attribute contains an array of Messages that have been posted on the review. Messages are the principal means of correspondence (outside the review content itself) between the dealer, the reviewer and the review readers on our site. While private messages have the possibility of being added in the future, for now this array will contain only the public messages from the dealer to the consumer.
EmployeeNames	String	A free-form field in which the reviewer entered a list of employee names that they worked with. This can be done in addition to tagging employees on reviews.
Employees	Array	This attribute contains an array of Employees that have been tagged on the review. If you are creating a review and wish to tag existing employees on that review, use the TaggedEmployees element instead.
TaggedEmployees	Array	When creating new reviews in the system, use this element (you can nest several TaggedEmployee values in the container) to specify tagged employees. The review will be created with the given Employees pre-tagged with optional rating values. You can find out what employees can be tagged on reviews by calling the Dealer Employees Collection API.
ReviewTitle	String	A title for the review, entered by the reviewer. Typically a one-sentence synopsis, much shorter than the content.
ReviewContent	String	The actual review content the user entered.
RecommendDealer	Boolean	Whether or not the reviewer recommends the dealer. Note that this value is distinct from the individual ratings.
Ratings³	xml element	The XML element that contains one or more dynamic rating collection
Ratings/Rating	xml element	The XML element that has nested XML elements for the rating type name and rating type value for a rating. These ratings may be included or excluded depending on whether they are available for the dealer/review type or not.
Ratings/Rating/Name	string	The name of the rating type whose value will be in the adjacent Value element.
Ratings/Rating/Value	double	The rating value for the rating type in the adjacent element. 0 for this value means it is not rated for this type. The rated values range from 1 to 5.
Rating	double	DEPRECATED. This XML element that stored multiple rating types is deprecated and is replaced by Ratings XML element.
DateEntered ⁴	DateTime (ISO-8601)	When the review was originally written.
DateActive ⁴	DateTime (ISO-8601)	When the review was posted to the website.
DateLastModified	DateTime (ISO-8601)	When the review was last updated by the reviewer. The reviewer can update their reviews at any time and this will let you know the most recent update date.
¹: Note that the SALES value is deprecated and was used before sales reviews were split between new and used automobiles. New reviews cannot be created using this value, but retrieval of older reviews in the system might still use it. As such, you should ensure that, as a consumer, you can handle it for rendering purposes.
²: You can determine what the manufacturer ID refers to (Ford, Acura, etc) by making a call to our Manufacturers Collection API. The valid combinations of Department and ManufacturerId can be obtained for any given dealer by calling the Dealer Department Manufactuers Collection API.
³: The reviews no longer have AVERAGE rating. The review rating is Overall with the other ratings as extra information and they don't impact the Overall rating of the review.
⁴: In most cases, DateActive and DateEntered will be the same. Occasionally, they might be different (in the case of a first-time reviewer or certain negative reviews). For the purposes of displaying when a review was posted to our website, you should always display DateActive and ignore DateEntered.