NAME
Business::US::USPS::WebTools - Use the US Postal Service Web Tools
SYNOPSIS
use Business::US::USPS::WebTools;
# see subclasses for API details
DESCRIPTION
*** THIS IS ALPHA SOFTWARE ***
This is the base class for the WebTools web service from the US Postal
Service. The USPS offers several services, and this module handles the
parts common to all of them: making the request, getting the response,
parsing error reponses, and so on. The interesting stuff happens in one
of the subclasses which implement a particular service. So far, the
only subclass in this distribution is
"Business::US::USPS::WebTools::AddressVerification".
new( ANONYMOUS_HASH )
Make the web service object. Pass is an anonymous hash with these
keys:
UserID the user id provided by the USPS
Password the password provided by the USPS
Testing true or false, to select the right server
If you don’t pass the UserID or Password entries, "new" looks in
the environment variables USPS_WEBTOOLS_USERID and
USPS_WEBTOOLS_PASSWORD.
If "new" cannot find both the User ID and the Password, it croaks.
If you pass a true value with the Testing key, the object will use
the testing server host name and the testing URL path. If the
Testing key is false or not present, the object uses the live
server details.
userid
Returns the User ID for the web service. You need to get this from
the US Postal Service.
password
Returns the Password for the web service. You need to get this from
the US Postal Service.
url Returns the URL for the request to the web service. So far, all
requests are GET request with all of the data in the query string.
response
Returns the response from the web service. This is the slightly
modified response. So far it only fixes up line endings and
normalizes some error output for inconsistent responses from
different physical servers.
is_error
Returns true if the response to the last request was an error, and
false otherwise.
If the response was an error, this method sets various fields in
the object:
$self->{error}{number}
$self->{error}{source}
$self->{error}{description}
$self->{error}{help_file}
$self->{error}{help_context}
SEE ALSO
The WebTools API is documented on the US Postal Service’s website:
http://www.usps.com/webtools/htm/Address-Information.htm
SOURCE AVAILABILITY
This source is part of a SourceForge project which always has the
latest sources in CVS, as well as all of the previous releases.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/brian-d-foy/
If, for some reason, I disappear from the world, one of the other
members of the project can shepherd this module appropriately.
AUTHOR
brian d foy, "<bdfoy@cpan.org>"
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright (c) 2006-2007 brian d foy. All rights reserved.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.