Screen: ShopSite > Orders

Automatic XML Orders Download

You can use a merchant-supplied program to automatically download a store’s orders as an XML-formatted text file. This help page describes the programmatic interface; the XML DTD is described on Orders Download XML Format.

Your orders download program must send a request to a ShopSite CGI program (db_xml.cgi) and provide the merchant’s user ID and password to start the download. To keep order information secure, the ShopSite CGI program should be invoked through a secure connection (https). If the connection is not secure, customer credit card information will not be included in the download.

The db_xml.cgi program can accept these optional parameters:

• startorder - the order number of the first order to include in the download. If not specified, the download starts with the oldest order.
• endorder - the order number of the last order to include in the download. If not specified, all orders from startorder will be included, or until maxorder is reached.
• startdate - The date of the oldest orders to download, in mm/dd/yyyy format. The date is based on server time.
• enddate - The date of the newest orders to download, in mm/dd/yyyy format. The date is based on server time.
• maxorder - The maximum number of orders to download.
• pay - Include payment information (credit card details) in the download. The recommended value for this parameter is "yes". If this parameter is not included in the command line or if a secure connection is not used, the download will not include payment information.

The db_xml.cgi will output the following line, followed by the XML order information:

Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\n\n

Example Program

This simple example program uses a non-secure connection to request order information, starting with order number 1962. Because the CGI directory on the server requires authentication, the program sends the user ID and password in encrypted form. This program does not process the XML, so it does not test the response values (Success or Failure).

if ((msg_socket = getconnection("mystore.com",80)) == -1)
{
  printf("Big trouble, no socket connection\n");
  exit(1);
}

    /* create the HTTP header */
sprintf(send_msg,
  "GET /cgi-bin/ss/db_xml.cgi?startorder=1962 HTTP/1.0\n"
  "Host: mystore.com:80\r\n"
  "Authorization: Basic ZGFycmVuOmRhcnJlbg==\r\n\n"); /* userid:password has been encrypted using mimencode.*/

    /* send the HTTP header */
count = send(msg_socket, send_msg, strlen(send_msg),0);

    /* loop to receive order info */
while (count = recv(msg_socket, buf, 2048, 0))
{
  buf[count] = '\0';
  printf("%s",buf); /* since just testing write the order info to the screen */

    /* Here is where you would create a buffer /*
    /* containing all the order info */
    /* and then process that information */
}

close(listen_socket);

The getconnection() function creates a socket link to the specified host on port 80. Once the socket connection has been established the program will "send" the HTTP header that specifies the CGI to invoked along with any parameters (in this case startorder=1962 for the starting order to download), the Host and the Authorization which is needed because the CGI is in a userid/password protected web server directory.

ShopSite Help and Resource Center February 13, 2004 Give Feedback

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