6.20 

UPS Real Time Shipping 

6.20.1 

About UPS Real Time Shipping 

For further information regarding UPS Real Time Shipping, see: 

http://www.ups.com/

Download the shipping documentation UPS provide. You will need to sign up 

for an account on the UPS web site in order to use UPS shipping, though this 

is free (at time of writing). 

The UPS real time Shipping integration in CactuShop allows you to get live 

shipping costs dynamically from the UPS web site. During the checkout 

process, various pieces of information (such as the weight of the items in the 

basket, the address of the shop and the destination address) are passed over 

to UPS, which then works out the various shipping methods (and 

corresponding prices) it can offer. These are passed back in XML format and 

CactuShop uses this information to format the shipping selection page, 

payonline.asp

 page and 

mailorder.asp

 page (and gateway equivalents such as 

WORLDPAY_mailorder.asp

). 

The result is a display that looks very similar to when CactuShop integrated 

shipping is selected. The difference is that the methods and prices are those 

quoted by UPS in real time, specific to this one order. It will also give 

estimated delivery times for some of the shipping methods. 

Please note that accuracy of the options and prices quoted is subject to some 

limitations. The price quote of UPS is only as good as the accuracy you have 

used when setting product weight within CactuShop. Various other factors 

that are not passed to UPS, such as package dimensions, can also affect the 

price. That said, CactuShop's UPS integration should produce accurate rates 

providing your products are not unduly bulky or oversized in one or more 

dimensions. 

Furthermore, returned delivery estimates (e.g.  by 8am tomorrow ) are only 

accurate if you place your order with UPS the moment that the customer's 

order is made. Clearly `next day' will not be next day (as far as the customer 

is concerned) if you only package and dispatch the order 24 hours after 

receiving it. The language string 

ContentText_UPSGuaranteedDeliveryExpl

is displayed with delivery estimates so that the customer is made aware of 

this. The text of this notification can obviously be changed through the 

language strings editor (see 9.3 for more detail on editing language strings). 

Assuming you have set up a UPS account, to switch on UPS Real Time 

Shipping you first need to ensure that you have Microsoft's MSXML3.0 DLLs 

installed on your server. Contact your host for information if you get errors 

relating to this. You then need to configure the UPS config settings, and, 

finally, change the config setting 

shippingsystem

 to `u' (see 7.4.16.3). 

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