Patent ID: 8676671

Claim:
A method for providing shipping information, comprising: sending, by an e-commerce server operated by an e-commerce entity, a registration request to an application programming interface (API) server operated by a shipping service provider, the API server comprising a plurality of API modules, each API module being dedicated to processing XML requests corresponding to a different one of a plurality of shipping information services, the registration request identifying at least one of the API modules; receiving, by the e-commerce server, the requested API module from the API server; integrating, by the e-commerce server, the requested API module with applications of the e-commerce server; receiving, by the e-commerce server, a request from an end-user for shipping information associated with one of the shipping information services; generating, by the e-commerce server, an extensible markup language (XML) request that specifies one of the API modules that is dedicated to processing requests corresponding to the requested shipping information service; sending the XML request to the specified API module of the application programming interface (API) server; receiving, from the specified API module, an XML response generated based on data included in the XML request, the XML response including the requested shipping information; and sending, from the e-commerce server, the XML response to the end-user.