Trying to get DHL shipping rates using ASP.Net but DHL's docs/samples are J2EE-geared. Anyone doing this in .Net that can provide some direction? - asp.net

Question

I'd like to get DHL shipping rates either per transaction or in batch all at once (to store in a table for later use) from an ASP.Net e-commerce application that ships product internationally, but after downloading their J2EE-based toolkit (https://xmlpi-ea.dhl.com) and reviewing the documentation & samples, I'm not quite sure how to do it in .Net. If anyone has experience with getting DHL shipping rates, I'd appreciate a point in the right direction using .Net. as I don't know Java.
Edit
Just found out the servlet is not discoverable, which means I cannot WSDL it to get a proxy class and will have to rely on tons of their XML samples to build my own client. Anyone done this in .NET already?

Answer 1

Looks like they have web services that you can use.
http://www.dhl-usa.com/en/express/resource_center/integrated_shipping_solutions.html

Answer 2

Sorry to be late. I just finished developing an integration and I give you here the way.
First you have to use xsd2code++ because the XSD.EXE from Microsoft doesn't work. Don't ask me why but it doesn't find the import included in the XSD file or maybe I didn't dig enough why and once I tried xsd2code++ it was a breeze to just right click the XSD in Visual Studio and use the option there.
Once you have your XSD converted to classes you consume it with the 3 methods bellow. See the 2 following lines of code that use the methods. Don't forget to add the necessary usings for XDocument.
Once you register on DHL web site you can download the DHL Toolkit PI which contains the folder XSD where all the XSD files are located.
NOTE : An alternative to Xsd2Code++ is Xsd2code on CodePlex : XSD2CODE hurry up because CodePlex is closing
string Request = XDocument.Parse(SerializeToXML(Quote)).ToString();
string Response = XDocument.Parse(SendRequest(Request)).ToString();
if (Response.IndexOf("DCTResponse") != -1)
DCTResponse = DeserializeFromXML<DHL.Response.DCTResponse>(Response);
else
DCTErrorResponse = DeserializeFromXML<DHL.Response.ErrorResponse>(Response);
public static string SendRequest(string XML)
{
string Response = "";
try
{
HttpWebRequest myReq = null;
myReq = WebRequest.Create(Properties.Settings.Default.DHLURL) as HttpWebRequest;
myReq.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
myReq.Method = "POST";
using (System.IO.Stream stream = myReq.GetRequestStream())
{
byte[] arrBytes = ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(XML);
stream.Write(arrBytes, 0, arrBytes.Length);
stream.Close();
}
WebResponse myRes = myReq.GetResponse();
System.IO.Stream respStream = myRes.GetResponseStream();
System.IO.StreamReader reader = new System.IO.StreamReader(respStream, System.Text.Encoding.ASCII);
Response = reader.ReadToEnd();
myRes.Close();
myRes = null;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Response = ex.ToString();
}
return Response;
}
public static string SerializeToXML<T>(T toSerialize)
{
string Result = "";
XmlSerializerNamespaces ns = new XmlSerializerNamespaces(); ns.Add("", "");
using (TextWriter tw = new StringWriter())
{
using (XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(tw, new XmlWriterSettings { OmitXmlDeclaration = true }))
{
new XmlSerializer(typeof(T)).Serialize(writer, toSerialize, ns);
Result = tw.ToString();
}
}
return Result;
}
public static T DeserializeFromXML<T>(string xml)
{
var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
return (T)serializer.Deserialize(new StringReader(xml));
}
Hope this helps...