Help building/cloning Shipping module for API

[danstever]

Hey everyone,

I'm having a real headache of a problem. I'm setting up a store that requires shipping of some pretty oddball requirement products. We are selling scaffolding and related items. The issues arises in that items like this cannot be shipped UPS/FedEx/etc. because of their size/weight/shipping class.

I am trying to figure out how I can do this shipping. I have been attempting to use MZMT to set up flat rate shipping by weight per state, but because of the range of weights in items, 130lb to 1800lb shipments, I am having to enter a TON of zipcodes and weights and enter all of this into the tables. I have not been able to get it to work yet.

So I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice in trying to write a new shipping module. I currently have an account with Yellow trucking and have access to their rate quote API. So, how can I write a module to work with Zen Cart and call their API to get my shipping rates?

Their API is a HTML form with a method="post" to a URL. There is also encrypted Username and password passed along in the post. The rate is then returned in XML.

Two more modifiers in this equation though... I also need to "pad" the returned rate from Yellow API to account for shipping materials (pallets, padding) and also need this to work with UPS shipping module.

If an item is below 130lb, and within size limits, we use UPS. I am just using the provided UPS module and it works great.

I have attempted to look at the UPS module and try to figure it out..... but can't.

Any advice or direction for this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all in advance!

[danstever]

Another thought....

If it helps at all, here is the "general" data that I am trying to pull. This is basically Yellow's help page.

http://www.myyellow.com/dynamic/serv...tequoteapi.jsp

Again... Thanks.