Understanding a license record

Every record we return describes one license event for one business. Knowing what each field means saves you from guessing later, so here is the whole object.

Identity fields

• id — our stable, unique identifier for the record. Use this as your foreign key.
• licenseNumber — the number assigned by the issuing authority.
• businessName — the public-facing name the business operates under.
• legalName — the registered legal entity name, which often differs from the business name.
• dbaName — the "doing business as" name when one is filed.

Classification fields

• licenseType — the category of license, such as food service or beverage.
• status — the current state of the license (for example active, pending, or expired).
• eventType — what happened: a new filing, a renewal, a status change, and so on.

Location and timing

• address — a nested object with street, city, county, state, zip, lat, and lng.
• filedDate — when the filing was submitted to the authority.
• effectiveDate — when the license takes effect.
• eventTimestamp — when the event we are reporting occurred, in UTC.
• sourceUrl — a link back to the underlying public record.

Treat id as the source of truth for deduplication. The same physical business can appear in multiple records over time as it renews or changes status, and each of those is a distinct event with its own id.