ColdFusion Development

UPS Tracking with XML and ColdFusion CFC

ColdFusion CFCs or ColdFusion components are very usefule when it comes to coding.  It goes beyond Custom Tags in their functionality. I put together this CFC to perform UPS tracking and return the data into a structure that can be referenced to display the tracking information for a package.  I borrowed most of the code and adapted for my own use in an eCommerce application that I have developed.

First we declare the opening tags for the component:

<cfcomponent>
 <cffunction name="Tracking" access="public" returntype="struct">
  <cfargument name="TrackingNumber" type="string" required="yes">

The first thing within the CFC I do is allocate a struct called TrackingInfo to store variable for the return to the calling procedure:

<cfset TrackingInfo = structnew()>

Next we build the XML request to UPS with the cfsavecontent tag:

<cfsavecontent variable="XMLToSend">
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<AccessRequest xml:lang="en-US">
<AccessLicenseNumber>youraccesslicense</AccessLicenseNumber>
<UserId>youruserid</UserId>
<Password>yourpassword</Password>
</AccessRequest>
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<TrackRequest xml:lang="en-US">
<Request>
<TransactionReference>
<CustomerContext>Example 3</CustomerContext>
<XpciVersion>1.0001</XpciVersion>
</TransactionReference>
<RequestAction>Track</RequestAction>
<RequestOption></RequestOption>
</Request>
<TrackingNumber><cfoutput>#TrackingNumber#</cfoutput></TrackingNumber>
</TrackRequest>
</cfsavecontent>

The varable TrackingNumber is the UPS Tracking Number that you pass in.  This chunk of code is saved in the variable XMLToSend.  Next thing is to pass the code to UPS using the cfhttp tag to pass the information:

  <cfhttp url="https://wwwcie.ups.com/ups.app/xml/Track" method="post">               
   <cfhttpparam name="Content-Type" type="HEADER" value="content-type: text/xml; charset='UTF-8';">
   <cfhttpparam type="body" value="#XMLToSend#">    
  </cfhttp>         
  <cfset response = cfhttp.fileContent>    

The response is saved in the variable response for further processing. We use the XMLParse function tag to create a parseable XML string.  ColdFusion has many powerful XML parsing functions built in and you still need to know the structure of the returning XML to really get at the data you want.

  <cfset StartingPosition = Find('<TrackResponse>',response)>    
  <cfset XMLResponse = XMLParse(Mid(response,StartingPosition,(Len(response)+1)-StartingPosition))>    
  <cfset trackXML = XMLResponse>    
  <cfset TrackingInfo.ResponseStatusCode = xmlResponse.TrackResponse.Response.ResponseStatusCode.XMLText>    

Here we've retrieved the ResponseStatusCode and stored it into the TrackingInfo struct.
A ResponseStatusCode of 1 means that we had a successful communication and  that tracking data is available. This next chuck of code saves the appropriate return variables in the TrackingInfo struct. If we did not receive a 1 in ResponseStatusCode, we just dummy up the remaining variables in the struct.

  <cfif TrackingInfo.ResponseStatusCode eq "1">
   <cfset TrackingInfo.rcvStatusCode = xmlResponse.TrackResponse.Shipment.Package.Activity.Status.StatusType.Code.XMLText>    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.rcvStatus = xmlResponse.TrackResponse.Shipment.Package.Activity.Status.StatusType.Description.XMLText>    
   <cfset rcvDate =  xmlResponse.TrackResponse.Shipment.Package.Activity.Date.XMLText>    
   <cfset rcvTime =  xmlResponse.TrackResponse.Shipment.Package.Activity.Time.XMLText>    
   <cfif isdefined("xmlResponse.TrackResponse.Shipment.Package.Activity.ActivityLocation.SignedForByName.XMLText")>
      <cfset TrackingInfo.rcvSigner = xmlResponse.TrackResponse.Shipment.Package.Activity.ActivityLocation.SignedForByName.XMLText>
   <cfelse>
      <cfset TrackingInfo.rcvSigner = "">
   </cfif>    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.LocationCity = xmlResponse.TrackResponse.Shipment.Package.Activity.ActivityLocation.Address.City.XMLText>    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.LocationState = xmlResponse.TrackResponse.Shipment.Package.Activity.ActivityLocation.Address.StateProvinceCode.XMLText>    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.LocationCountry = xmlResponse.TrackResponse.Shipment.Package.Activity.ActivityLocation.Address.CountryCode.XMLText>    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.shipService = xmlResponse.TrackResponse.Shipment.Service.Description.XMLText>    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.shipWeight = xmlResponse.TrackResponse.Shipment.Package.PackageWeight.Weight.XMLText>
   <cfset TrackingInfo.shipMeasure = xmlResponse.TrackResponse.Shipment.Package.PackageWeight.UnitOfMeasurement.Code.XmlText>    
   <cfset tempPickup = xmlResponse.TrackResponse.Shipment.PickupDate.XMLText>    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.rcvDate = Mid(rcvDate,5,2) & "/" & Mid(rcvDate,7,2) & "/" & mid(rcvDate,1,4)>    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.rcvTime = Mid(rcvTime,1,2) & ":" & Mid(rcvTime,3,2) & ":" & mid(rcvTime,6,2)>    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.shipPickup = CreateDate(Left(tempPickup,4),Mid(tempPickup,5,2),Right(tempPickup,2))>    
  <cfelse>
   <cfset TrackingInfo.rcvStatusCode = "">    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.rcvStatus = "DATA UNAVAILABLE">    
   <cfset rcvDate =  "">    
   <cfset rcvTime =  "">    
      <cfset TrackingInfo.rcvSigner = "">
   <cfset TrackingInfo.LocationCity = "">    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.LocationState = "">    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.LocationCountry = "">    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.shipService = "">    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.shipWeight = "">
   <cfset TrackingInfo.shipMeasure = "">    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.rcvDate = "">    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.rcvTime = "">    
   <cfset TrackingInfo.shipPickup = "">    
  </cfif>

Finally the return the TrackingInfo struct with the following command:

<cfreturn TrackingInfo>

We need to close up the function and the component.

 </cffunction>
</cfcomponent>

This code needs to be saved as UPS.cfc and called from the main program as follows:

<cfinvoke component="UPS" method="Tracking" returnvariable="TrackingInfo">
        <cfinvokeargument name="TrackingNumber" value="#TrackingNumber#">
</cfinvoke>

<cfoutput>
 #TrackingInfo.LocationCity# <br>
 #TrackingInfo.LocationState# <br>
#TrackingInfo.LocationCountry <br>
 #TrackingInfo.shipService <br>
 #TrackingInfo.shipWeight <br>
 #TrackingInfo.shipMeasure#  <br>
 #TrackingInfo.rcvDate#<br>  
 #TrackingInfo.rcvTime# <br>
#TrackingInfo.shipPickup#  </cfoutput>


This code has been real helpful and I hope you can use it in your programming adventures.