Topic
FedEx, DHL, and Amazon Buy Shipping from an integrator's seat: consolidation, electronic trade documents, cross-border export, and the SOAP endpoints still running production.
5 guides, written from real builds.
Shipping APIs
Integrating India's CSB-V commercial export lane means a SOAP service with 142 positional fields, no sandbox, and responses that are delimited strings rather than parseable XML. Here's what CSB-V actually is, the four things about this API that break normal SOAP tooling, and how to test an integration that has no test environment.
Shipping APIs
Consolidating export parcels under one master shipment is often run by hand through a desktop tool, on the assumption that the shipping API can't do it. It can — FedEx's Ship API exposes it as Open Ship. Here's what Open Ship is, the request shape that actually works, and the four things about it the docs gloss over.
Shipping APIs
Consolidating many parcels under one master airway bill is standard practice for export, and with most carriers it means a desktop app and manual data entry. DHL India exposes it as a real SOAP operation — one call carrying a General block, a Mother, and an array of Babies. Here's how the structure works, and the gate you should keep it behind until you've seen a live response.
Shipping APIs
Electronic Trade Documents let you attach the commercial invoice to a FedEx shipment digitally instead of printing three copies into a plastic wallet. It also moves a class of customs delay from the warehouse into your code. Here's where ETD sits in the Ship API request, what customs actually needs from you, and the document fields that get shipments held.
Shipping APIs
Once you can create a CSB-V label, two smaller operations turn it into a workable daily process: a rate quote that books nothing, and a pickup request that gets a courier to the door. Both are worth wiring early — the quote because it is the only safe way to exercise a live API, and the pickup because otherwise someone is on the phone every afternoon.
Shahzeb Khan runs Databaaba, a one-person studio that builds shipping & carrier apis integrations for sellers, agencies, and software teams. Every guide here came out of a real client build.