[ic] USPS Internal Lookup (International)

Thomas J.M. Burton interchange-users@icdevgroup.org
Wed Feb 19 15:12:54 2003


Hello IC Users,

One of my clients wants me to set up a USPS Airmail Parcel Post
shipping option in his IC catalog for his international customers to
use. I've looked around the archives and other IC resources for
references to setting this up and that got me to the point I'm at now.

I think I've got everything I need in place to do this using a
UPS-style internal lookup, but I'm stuck on actually getting it to
work.

Here's what I've done so far:

(I'm running Interchange 4.8.6)

1. Used the data from
http://pe.usps.gov/text/pub51/51tblc.html#_Toc498745158 to create a
rate chart file similar to Ground.csv. I have this file set up as
AirParcelPost.csv (and a couple other names, see below) in the
catalog's products directory (and set up the proper dbconf file(s)).
See www.gfdm.net/USPS/AirParcelPost.csv.

2. Obtained the "Rate Group Chart" for Airmail Parcel Post (similar to
a UPS zone file, not sure where I got this now, can't find a working
link to it). I have this file set up as USA.csv in the catalog's
products directory. See www.gfdm.net/USPS/APPRateGroups.csv.

3. The following lines are in the catalog.cfg file:

    UpsZoneFile   products/USA.csv
    UpsZoneFile   products/970.csv

(This client also uses UPS shipping, so that needs to work as well.
Hence the two Zone Files. Do these need to be on the same line or do I
have it right as separate lines?)

4. In products/shipping.asc, I have:

USPSapp USPS Air Parcel Post weight 0 0 e Nothing to ship!  {'origin'
=> "USA",'ui_ship_type' => "UPSI",'zone' => "USA",'table' =>
"AirParcelPost",'ups' => "1",'PriceDivide' => "1",'geo' => "[data
table='country' field='isonum' key='[value country]']",}
USPSapp USPS Air Parcel Post weight 0 150 u
USPSapp USPS Air Parcel Post weight 150 9999999 e Too heavy for USPS

(please excuse line wrapping)

Now, I'm not sure if that's set up correctly. From what I can tell by
looking at the USPS files and reading through the UPS-style lookup info
in the IC docs, it seemed that the isonum field in the country table
should be used instead of the zip code. I'm not sure if I have that set
up correctly though. I'm pretty sure that the table shouldn't be set to
AirParcelPost either.

>From what I can tell, the lookup should go something like this:

1. Get the isonum from the shipping address country.
2. Lookup the isonum in products/USA.csv
3. From there, I'm a bit confused. Either I need to have separate rate
files named Canada.csv, Mexico.csv, etc, or I need to modify the rate
file I do have. Since I only have one rate file and can't find where I
got it from, I'm not sure what to do if I need to set up multiple
files. The way the zones and rates relate between the two files is
really confusing me.

If anyone out there can help me break this down and get it set up, I'd
be greatly appreciated. Any finalized steps will gladly be shared in a
howto so nobody has to muck through this again.

I hope all of this makes sense. I think I'll pass out now.

Thanks in advance,
Tom

___________________________________
Thomas J.M. Burton
Global Focus Digital Media, LLC
www.globalfocusdm.com