>Hello all,
>
>Anybody using VFP to check tracking of packages shipped by UPS. They seem to offer several tools to do so and I am wondering what sucess others have had with this. It seems you can send a CGI request to their website then parse the result, prep an email and parse the return email, or send a CSV file and get one returned. They also have some API samples, but I didn't see any VFP examples and it looks more cumbersome than the other methods.
>
>Thanks in advance
>
>Bob


I thought Steve Sawyer did a Devcon presentation on this (or was planning on one) - I know he was playing around with the UPS website and some of the automated (XML based) services. I talked to him a few months ago about this - he was having problems getting UPS's site to accept the XML string he was passing. It turns out the XML string isn't "well formed" (the Microsoft.XMLHTTP COM object chokes on it) so it would fail validation locally, but still be accepted by their site. He had better luck once he switched back to the format UPS was expecting.

I also remember having major problems with the content header - the UPS site didn't use a standard "text/xml" content. It was expecting a urlencoded form header instead. They also didn't like CR/LF's in the XML.

I don't have any real code to show you, since I didn't have any need for it at the time. They definitely make you jump through a lot of hoops to get signed up as a developer and get access to their docs. I only spent 3 or 4 hours playing with it to see if I could answer some of his questions.

I think the hardest part is getting it to work initially. It definitely would be nice if all this stuff was wrapped up in a VFP object, though.