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When creating links programmatically with Dub, you might want a way to associate them with a user or other identifiers in your system. There are a few ways to do this, depending on your data structure:

External ID

In certain scenarios, it is essential to identify links within your system. For instance, you may need to associate a link with a user without storing the Dub link ID directly in your database (e.g. for referral links). The externalId field serves this purpose effectively. It acts as a unique identifier within your database, allowing you to associate it with a corresponding link in Dub’s system. Dub allows you to create links using an externalId and subsequently retrieve them by the same identifier.
externalId should be a unique value across your workspace. Trying to create a link with an externalId that already exists will result in a 409 conflict error error.
Here is an example of how to create a link with an externalId:
Let’s see how to retrieve a link by its externalId:
In addition to updating a link by its linkId, you can also update a link by its externalId.
Make sure to prefix the externalId with ext_. For example, if your externalId is 12345, you should pass ext_12345.

Retrieve analytics by externalId

You can also retrieve analytics for a link by its externalId. This is helpful for fetching the analytics for a given link using the unique identifier from your system.

Tenant ID

The ID of the tenant that created the link inside your system. If set, it can be used to fetch all links for a tenant. This is useful if you have a system that lets your users create their own links, and you want to group them on a tenant level. Let’s see how to create a link with a tenant ID:
Here is how to retrieve links by tenant ID:

Retrieve analytics by tenantId

You can retrieve analytics by tenantId by passing the tenantId prop. This is helpful for fetching the analytics for all the links under a specific tenant, or the total analytics for a tenant.

Tags

Tags are a great way to organize your links on Dub. With tags, you can: You can use either pass the tag ID or tag name to create a link with tags.
You can retrieve links by tag by tags.

Retrieve analytics by tags

You can retrieve analytics for a tag (or multiple tags) by passing the tagIds prop. This is helpful for fetching the analytics for all the links under a specific tag, or the total analytics for a tag (or multiple tags).

Folders

Folders are a hierarchical way to organize your links on Dub. With folders, you can: You can use the folder ID to create a link with a folder.
Here is how to retrieve links by folder ID:

Retrieve analytics by folderId

You can retrieve analytics by folderId by passing the folderId prop. This is helpful for fetching the analytics for all the links under a specific folder, or the total analytics for a folder.