XML Tracking Status FAQ

Where do I start?

1. 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.

2. 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.

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

4. Use the XML Test Harness to submit a test tracking request directly to us. Note that it is submitting tracking requests to:

  • https://api.shipwire.com/exec/TrackingServices.php

5. If you only want to see the XML being received by Shipwire, use the Echo Only form. This is useful, for example, 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 that you’re not posting with proper URL- encoded syntax (if using a GET request). Note that the echo test form is submitting requests to:

  • https://api.shipwire.com/exec/TrackingServices.test.php

View proper URL encoding?

 

How to specify which orders you want to track

There are currently three ways to retrieve tracking update information for orders:
  • Bookmark-based (“Send me all tracking update information posted since the last time I asked for tracking updates.”)
  • Customer order number-based
  • Shipwire order ID-based
 

Bookmark-based tracking updates

If you want to get tracking information for orders updated since your last tracking request, include a <Bookmark> tag in your <TrackingUpdate> request.

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

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.

 

Customer order number-based tracking updates

If you want to look up order tracking information by your own order number (e.g. your shopping cart order number), use the <OrderNo> tag.

Notes: Shipwire does not prevent orders from having duplicate customer order numbers, so this mode of look-up may return multiple orders for the given customer order number.

 

Shipwire order-ID based

If you want to look up  order tracking information by the Shipwire ID (e.g. 1234567890-123456-1), use the <ShipwireId> tag.

 

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.

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