Introduction

UltraCart offers four distinct Web Services

• Checkout Web Service - An API allowing an order to be placed. This is an API geared around customer experience. It is the largest web service UltraCart offers. If you need to create your own checkout pages running on a different server (and the JavaScript API won't meet your needs), this is the web service you should use.
• Order Management Web Service - A simple interface allowing for orders to be created
• Affiliate Management Web Service - A simple interface allowing for affiliate management

Web Service Philosophy

With the exception of the Checkout Web Service, you'll notice that the other web services are small. That's intentional. It is not a goal of UltraCart to expose the entire business operation via Web Services. Web Services are a nightmare to support. If you compare them to supporting a JavaScript API, the disadvantages are obvious. With a JavaScript API, we can visit the site, run through the checkout, examine the JavaScript, and provide help. With Web Services? That code is located securely on a remote server we can't access. The code is often written in a language beyond our expertise. None of the engineers here at UltraCart really like to program Perl, eh? We do it when we have too, but trying to figure out someone else's Perl code can lead to long support times.

So why offer them at all?
Our merchants have asked for them.

Understanding this philosophy will help with understanding our web services. They're very incomplete and random – on purpose. We've only created Web Service methods in response to specific customer needs. If you can't find what you're looking for, chances are you're the first person to look for it. Open up a forum post or support ticket and begin a dialog with UltraCart engineers about what your specific needs are.