Shipping APIs Adapter

trackit is a node module that allows you to retrieve data from shipping carriers like UPS and FedEx in a common format. It interfaces with tracking APIs when available, and falls back to screen scraping. For carriers that expose tracking APIs, user is expected to acquire and provide credentials like license numbers, meter numbers, user IDs and passwords.

Carrier Guessing

Really, why do users have to know that a tracking number was provided by a particular carrier. That step is just totally unnecessary, given that we can guess the carrier from the tracking number in 90% of the cases. trackit provides a convenience function for this.

Carriers supported

• UPS
• FedEx
• FedEx Smartpost
• USPS
• Canada Post
• DHL
• UPS Mail Innovations
• DHL Global Mail
• LaserShip
• OnTrac
• Amazon
• A1 International
• Prestige

Usage

Add trackit to your package.json and install it.

npm install @heuristical/trackit

Using the trackit Clients

Initialize the shipper clients with your account credentials.

import {
	UpsClient,
	FedexClient,
	UspsClient,
	DhlClient,
	LasershipClient,
	OnTracClient,
	UpsMiClient,
	DhlGmClient,
	CanadaPostClient,
	AmazonClient,
	PrestigeClient
} from 'trackit';

const ups = new UpsClient({
	licenseNumber: '1C999A999B999999',
	userId: 'trackit-user',
	password: 'shhh-secret'
});

const fedex = new FedexClient({
	key: 'xyxyxyxyabababab',
	password: 'asdfawasfdasdfasdf1',
	account: '123456789',
	meter: '99999999'
});

const usps = new UspsClient({
	userId: "590XABCR3210",
	clientIp: "10.5.5.1"
});

const lsClient = new LasershipClient();

const dhlClient = new DhlClient({
	userId: "SHIPI_79999",
	password: "trackit"
});

const dhlgmClient = new DhlGmClient();

const canadaPostClient = new CanadaPostClient({
	username: "maple-leafs",
	password: "zamboni"
});

const onTrac = new OnTracClient();

const upsmi = new UpsMiClient();

const amazonClient = new AmazonClient();

const prestige = new PrestigeClient();

Use an initialized client to request tracking data.

const {
	err,
	data
} = await ups.requestData({ trackingNumber: '1Z1234567890123456' });

if (err) console.error("[ERROR] error retrieving tracking data", err);
if (data) console.log("[DEBUG] new tracking data received.", data);

You can use the Amazon client to query status of an item by its order ID and shipment ID (packageIndex defaults to 1 - trackit does not yet support multiple shipments per order).

const orderID = '106-9151392-7203433';
const orderingShipmentId = 'DmZd0KS8k';
const {
	err,
	data
} = await amazonClient.requestData({ orderID, orderingShipmentId });
if (err) console.error("[ERROR] error retrieving tracking data", err);
if (data) console.log("[DEBUG] new tracking data received.", data);

Note that orderId and shipmentId can be found in the URL embedded in the " Track your package" yellow button. Here's the format of that URL:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/css/shiptrack/view.html
/ref=pe_385040_121528360_TE_SIMP_typ?ie=UTF8
&orderID={orderID}
&orderingShipmentId={orderingShipmentId}
&packageId=1

Example response returned:

{
    "status": 2,
    "activities": [
        {
            "location": "Memphis, TN 38118",
            "timestamp": "2014-02-16T22:19:00.000Z",
            "datetime": "2014-02-16T17:19:00",
            "details": "Departed FedEx location"
        },
        {
            "location": "East Hanover, NJ 07936",
            "timestamp": "2014-02-15T23:57:00.000Z",
            "datetime": "2014-02-15T18:57:00",
            "details": "Left FedEx origin facility"
        },
        {
            "location": "East Hanover, NJ 07936",
            "timestamp": "2014-02-15T15:57:00.000Z",
            "datetime": "2014-02-15T10:57:00",
            "details": "Picked up"
        }
    ],
    "weight": "0.2 LB",
    "service": "FedEx Priority Overnight",
    "eta": "2014-02-17T15:30:00.000Z",
    "destination": "US",
    "request": {
      "trackingNumber": "9400110200881269505160"
    }
}

A Note on timestamp and datetime

There are two types of shipping carriers - one that provide a date and time in their shipping activities that represents the local time at the location indicated. And another that provide a timestamp, which includes a UTC offset. In the first case, since a timezone is not known, trackit just assumes UTC, and returns a timestamp attribute in the activity objects. In the second case, trackit returns a timestamp attribute which has a UTC offset embedded in it, and also a datetime attribute which represents the local time.

Optional parameters for trackit clients

Trackit clients parameters must be an options object that extends the ITrackitClientOptions interface. This means that you can optionally set some default request parameters that will then be automatically included for every request that that client performs. These can also be passed manually when calling the requestData() method.

// Set for all requests performed by upsClient
const upsClient = new UpsClient({
	...otherClientOptions,
	raw: true,
	timeout: 1000
});

// Alternatively, you can specify these parameters on a per-request basis.
const { err, data } = await upsClient.requestData({
	...otherClientOptions,
	raw: true,
	timeout: 1000
});

Valid options:

• raw - response includes the raw response received from the shipping carrier API.
  Default Value: false

• timeout - how many milliseconds to wait for a shipping carrier API response before returning a timeout error. This option can be overridden by a timeout attribute in the object passed on to the requestData() call.
  Default Value: 2000

Using the Carrier Guesser

There's usually only one carrier that matches a tracking number (UPS is the only carrier that uses '1Z' prefix for its tracking numbers), but there are several cases, where there are multiple matches. For example, FedEx uses a service called SmartPost, where it relies on USPS to deliver the package at the last mile. In such cases, FedEx provides tracking through most of the package's journey, and then USPS either takes over, or provides duplicate tracking in the last leg. The tracking number used is the same between the two carriers. Similar situation with UPS Mail Innovations as well. Therefore, the guessCarrier() function returns an array, and we leave it up to the user to decide manually or through other automated means which carrier is the real one or provides more accurate tracking.

import { guessCarrier } from 'trackit';

let possibleCarriers = guessCarrier('1Z6V86420323794365');
// ['ups']
possibleCarriers = guessCarrier('9274899992136003821767');
// ['fedex', 'usps']
possibleCarriers = guessCarrier('EC207920162US');
// ['usps']

Building

Clone this repo (or first fork it)

git clone [email protected]:heuristicAL/trackit.git

Install dependencies

npm install

Build

npm run build

Adding new shipping carriers

• Extend the common class TrackitClient<TShipment, TRequestOptions extends ITrackitRequestOptions>
• Implement necessary methods:
  • requestOptions(options: TRequestOptions extends ITrackitRequestOptions)
  • validateResponse(response: string)

Credits

trackit was originally forked from shipit and then the code went through some heavy changes:

• The code was converted from Coffeescript to Typescript
• The callback-based code was replaced by promise-based code.
• moment was replaced by date-fns
• Finally, the original Chai and Mocha tests were replaced by Jest.

Due to the extensive changes that these changes introduced, I decided to unlink this from the original forked repo as, realistically, they will never be in sync.

1. Rishi Arora for creating the original project that trackit was forked from shipit