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In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to track a parcel or consignment within the Australia Post delivery network using the Delivery Choices API.

The following steps will be completed:

1. Retrieve current tracking status for a parcel or consignment using the unique tracking identifier.

Notes:

• Note all postage services support tracking. When a parcel or consignment is lodged, a unique tracking identifier is assigned if the postage service chosen supports parcel tracking
• A consignment generally refers to multiple parcels delivered together using a single tracking identifier

Authentication

Some Delivery Choice services accept personal user data and require OAuth authentication for access, however the Delivery Choice API used in this tutorial only requires HTTP Basic authentication.

• All requests are HTTP GET returning either XML or JSON (depending on the URL)
• All requests require a valid API Key in the form of a username and password pair
• All requests require setting a HTTP Header Cookie variable of ‘OBBasicAuth=fromDialog’

Step 1: Retrieve current tracking status of a parcel using its unique tracking identifier

In this step, we’ll call the the tracking service to retrieve the current tracking status for a parcel within the Australia Post delivery network using its unique tracking identifier.

Input parameters required

• Unique tracking identifier for a parcel or consignment
  • The service can accept a maximum of 10 tracking identifiers (comma separated values) and at least one must be specified

The code above generates the following HTTP request:

The response contains

• A tracking status ‘event notification’ code that maps to a customer friendly tracking status message
• There are four possible error states that can be returned from the service
  1. Less than one tracking identifier supplied to the service call
  2. More than 10 tracking identifiers supplied to the service call
  3. Invalid tracking identifier supplied to the service call
  4. Tracking identifier supplied for a postage service that does not support tracking
• If the tracking identifier supplied to the service refers to a parcel consignment, the response will contain tracking event notification codes for all parcels within the consignment