Stedi integrations use Guide JSON, a JSON format that closely reflects the structure of an EDI transaction.

To complete your EDI integration, you need to transform Guide JSON into and out of a format that your internal systems can understand.

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What is Guide JSON?

Guides are Stedi’s machine-readable representation of the EDI specifications that your trading partners provide to you (typically in the form of PDF, Excel, or Word files), or that you provide to your trading partners. Each guide is backed by JSON schema that defines the structure of the EDI transaction. Guide JSON is JSON data that conforms to this schema.

Each time you receive an EDI file from a trading partner, Stedi uses the inbound transaction settings within the partnership to determine which Stedi guide to use for validation. If validation is successful, Stedi parses the file into one or more transactions and translates those transactions into Guide JSON.

Each time you generate outbound EDI files, you must supply Stedi’s Generate EDI API with transaction data in the Guide JSON format.

To view any guide’s JSON Schema, navigate to the guide in your Stedi account, click the Actions menu, and select View schema.

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Example

The following example shows an Amazon 850 Purchase Order in both X12 EDI and Guide JSON formats. The EDI format is in the first tab, and the Guide JSON is in the second tab.

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How Guide JSON formats vary

Guide JSON formats vary in three ways. You must account for these differences when you receive Guide JSON webhooks for inbound transactions, and when you call the Generate EDI API to send outbound transactions.

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Transaction type

Since a guide can represent any of the 300+ EDI transaction types, the Guide JSON (and corresponding JSON Schema) will differ depending on the transaction type. For example, the Guide JSON for an 850 Purchase Order will be different than the Guide JSON for an 810 Invoice. This means that the payloads that you receive from Stedi via webhook will vary depending on the transaction type, and the payloads that you send to the Generate EDI API will also vary depending on the transaction type.

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Release

X12 has 30+ releases, or versions. There are often breaking changes between X12 releases, which makes it impossible to reliably canonicalize transactions across releases. Since different trading partners use different releases, the Guide JSON you have to accept from and provide to Stedi differ depending on the release. For example, the Guide JSON for an 850 Purchase Order in X12 release 004010 will be different than the Guide JSON for an 850 Purchase Order in X12 release 005010.

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Trading partner

Since different trading partners use different EDI specifications, the Guide JSON may differ depending on the trading partner. For example, the Amazon Retail 855 PO Acknowledgment allows you to optionally specify pricing information in the CTP segment, but the Walmart 855 does not.