XML Connection Methods

Developers wishing to interface directly with the transaction processing server may do so using XML. Sale requests are posted directly to the processing server via HTTPS, ensuring the security of the submitted information. XML responses are generated during the same connection, reducing the number of connections required to process a transaction.

The XML schema provides an easy alternative for developers wishing to process real-time transactions. Because of the open-architecture of XML, developers may create their own Windows COM objects, Java apps, PHP routines, Perl libraries, standardized Web Services, etc. If your application can generate XML, you can process transactions.

Since the XML method is simply another method for processing sale transactions, all gateway features remain available. This includes the Virtual Terminal, Transaction Listing, Testing Interface, etc.

XML Security

For added security, XML capabilities are not immediately activated at the time of your registration. This feature must be enabled by a gateway representative.

XML Interface Modules

XML API Connection

All transaction types are supported through this method.

XMLTRANS (Deprecated)

Order, Preauth, Force Transactions

Pricing

A monthly fee of $5.00 is charged for access to the XML Connection Method. This fee is above and beyond your current gateway access fees.

Creating XML Requests

There are certain characters such as "&" and "<" that may not appear in a XML request unless they are part of the actual XML structure. These characters have to be "escaped" by using the forms &amp; and &lt;. More information about XML markup can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#syntax.

We suggest that you do not try and create XML structures by simply appending to a string with print statements. Using a XML generation library will ensure that you do not accidently create badly formatted documents due to user input. The disadvantage of using a library is that it will take a little longer to code. If you do not use a library you need to make sure that any XML node text you are adding that is coming from a user gets escaped as described above. If you do not escape these characters you will have transactions occasionally fail due to a bad XML structure.

Here are some suggested XML generation libraries for different development environments. This is by no means an authoritative list and there are other good libraries available.

• Java - ECS
• Perl - XML::Generator
• PHP - DOM
• Ruby - REXML
• .NET, C# - XMLTextWriter

 

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