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Integration with affiliate websites

The Content Service not only enables client-server communication within Content Delivery, it can also make distinct pieces of content of your website available to third parties.

Making content available for integration by third parties, such as social networking sites or partner websites, is a growing trend on the web, ideal for maximizing cross-selling opportunities. A web service that makes content from one website available to another must satisfy a number of requirements. The thin layer that the Content Service places on top of the specific Content Delivery APIs for JSP and ASP.NET aims to specifically satisfy these requirements:

Ease of integration
The person managing the website to which you want to add your content should not have to learn your CMS in order to integrate your content on their website, and would prefer an interface to the content that follows accepted standards. The minimal Content Service API reduces interaction with the Storage Layer through the OData-compliant web service. OData, short for the Open Data Protocol, is a standard web protocol for querying and updating data. For more information, refer to http://www.odata.org.
Up-to-date content
Any change to a piece of content on your website should immediately cause the same piece of content to be updated on other sites. For example, if your hotel room has a 20% discount for an hour, this discount should be immediately visible wherever the content is displayed. The integrating website calls the Content Service at visit time to ensure that your content is up to date.
Customizable look & feel
The integrating website should be able to apply its own house styles to your content to make it conform to its look & feel. For example, if your piece of content has a blue background on your site, the integrator should be able to give it a yellow background on his or her own site. The Content Service can return XML, to which an XSLT stylesheet can be applied to create a custom look & feel. The Content Service can also return data in JSON format.

RWS Community article: Portal integration scenarios and considerations

One integration application of the Content Service is in portal integration. For more general information about this portal integration with Tridion Sites, refer to the RWS Community article at this URL: https://community.sdl.com/product-groups/tridion/tridion-sites/b/techweblog/posts/portal-integration-scenarios-and-considerations.