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Emland · Mar 26, 2010, 01:57 PM

I hope someone here can point me in the right direction.

My boss has given me the job of redevloping the company website (and given me a microscopic budget) and I am using Kompozer.

I want our customers to be able to track their packages from our website (rather than redirecting them to UPS, FedEx, etc.)

I love what this site is doing Boxoh universal package tracking: UPS, FedEx, USPS, and DHL with RSS and Maps When you put in a valid tracking number for any of the large carriers, it displays its origin and delivery date.
It appears to be written in javascript and is using Google maps.

I can't find anything in the Google marketplace or in open source libraries. Any ideas?

Thanks,

E

costas0811 · Mar 29, 2010, 08:59 AM

I would break it down like this
You'd need some sort of UI to enter a number.

This can either determine the type of routing number (like your example) or the user can specify the shipping company.

Then you'll need to to that company's site and pull back the info. Basically you'll need to simulate that company's form (that they use for tracking packages) and submit the request appropriately.

You're going to get back an HTML page so its just matter of using this data and parsing it however you want.

Of course if the companies all provide some sort of API this will be much easier.

Google maps definitely has ample documentation and examples and as long as you can extract some sort of location this shouldn't be that hard.

I am just guessing that the shipping companies don't have any type of Captcha hurdle, but any competent web programmer could do this in a day or 2.