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USPS Shipping - API changes made by post office - Will this affect the present module?
Submitted by Alaska on Fri, 05/09/2008 - 16:39
On May 12, 2008 several APIs will be altered in response to the USPS Price Change. While the APIs listed below will remain structurally and syntactically backward compatible, data changes are possibly substantial enough to affect some integrators. See attached for more details.
Yeah, I just got this email too. It does look like it's going to affect the module. Fantastic. • Integration of domestic and international price changes across all Web Tools APIs that use rates Most impacted will be the integrators using RateV2 and IntlRate as shown below. RateV2: Besides the price differences, there are new services and a renamed service. This also changes the order of the services within the response. Note that RateV2 is in maintenance-only mode and integrators should upgrade to RateV3 to obtain the latest features. IntlRate: Besides the price differences, the former First Class Mail International (FCMI) with Service ID=”3” is replaced with up to three nodes: FCMI Letter ID=”13”, FCMI Flat ID=”14”, and FCMI Parcel ID=”15”. In addition, currency values are returned in a two-decimal-place fixed format (was inconsistent before). Additionally, there are a few subtle differences in First Class Mail International nodes returned for IntlRate: • Hyphen in name. Was “First-Class” but now will be “First Class” as shown. My concern is why was the USPS code notification sent out only a few days prior to the change? Jim    My concern is why was the USPS code notification sent out only a few days prior to the change?
I've been extremely happy with USPS in the past - their support for their Web Tools is great. However, they screwed up big time on this one. I got the notification e-mail at 4pm on Friday, saying the API would change on Monday. I promptly called them and spent 30 minutes registering my extreme displeasure at the way they handled this. (BTW, they had already heard from others - I think the message is getting through). The phone number is 1-800-344-7779 - I urge everyone who uses the USPS web tools to give them a call. On the positive side, the changes are being made only to RateV2 and IntlRate. The USPS module uses RateV3 for domestic shipping - that won't be affected. For international shipping, there are some changes to the XML returned for First Class services which will probably affect Ubercart. However, since there's no way to test any fixes until the new API makes its debut on Monday, we'll just have to wait and see if things break. Ah, you're right about the V3 vs. V2. I hadn't read that, I guess. Well we sell a few shippable items each day so I might be able to tell you whether or not it breaks. Perhaps I'll do some testing on my own tomorrow as well.
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Joined: 10/16/2007