Where do I start?

First sign up for a free Shipwire account. You will need a Shipwire email and password, for authentication. Signing up for an account has no cost or obligation associated with it.

Second walk through the Example XML Status Request and Response. A Shipwire email address and password will be in <EmailAddress> and <Password> tags. The type of server will be in a <Server> tag, and set to Test or Production. If you set this tag to Test, and set a valid Shipwire email address and password, then the example response will always be returned.

The <Bookmark> tag currently has three options:

“1″ for a dump of everything in the account
“2″ for a dump of everything since the last bookmark
“3″ for a dump of everything since the last bookmark AND reset the bookmark to right now

Third use Shipwire Priority Support if you have any questions or problems. You can also request our MSN Messenger ID.

Fourth use the XML Test Harness to submit a test order directly to us. Note that it is submitting orders to:

https://www.shipwire.com/exec/TrackingServices.php

Further note that it is posting the XML, to the TrackingUpdateXML variable, in a URL encoded form:

https://www.shipwire.com/exec/trackingservices.php?TrackingUpdateXML=
%3CTrackingUpdate%3E%0A+++%3CEmailAddress%3Eyouremail.com…

If you insert your Shipwire email and password, you will see that the you are now authenticated, and able to further test the XML.

Fifth if you only want to see the XML being received by Shipwire, use the Echo Only form. This is useful if your script appears to be producing perfect XML, but you are not getting any response from Shipwire. The most likely culprits are that you’re not posting to the TrackingUpdateXML variable, or you’re not posting with proper URL encoded syntax. Note that it is submitting requests to:

https://www.shipwire.com/exec/TrackingServices.test.php
View proper URL encoding?

Notes:

• If the <Bookmark> tag is not properly set in the Request, then it will default to a setting of “1″.
• The <Bookmark> tag will only appear in the Response, if in fact a Bookmark is already set.
• The id under the <Product> tag is the unique SKU or Model # used to identify a product. If a shirt comes in L, M and S sizes, then 3 separate IDs will be provided.
• The <Product> tag will only appear for SKUs with a current inventory of 1 or greater. When an inventory level hits zero, or becomes negative, it will no longer be provided in the XML response.

Will there be future upgrades? Will they be backward compatible?

As we continually add new features, we will do our best to add new attributes and tags to support additional information. Since we will not subtract from, or rearrange the existing attributes/parameters, your existing XML parsing software shouldn’t be affected by the new information.