Tracking UPS Packages via JavaScript

2005_01_03-ups_tracking.js

/**
 * A post at TechDigits [https://web.archive.org/web/20050311025802/http://techdigits.blogspot.com/2004/12/ups-package-tracking-with-rss.html]
 * about tracking UPS packages via RSS and web services got me thinking if the same is possible via Javascript and
 * the XmlHttpRequest object (in IE and Mozilla). Since Google's Gmail and Google Suggest started using that object,
 * it has become more popular. So after some thinking, I put together the following quick and dirty code snippet
 * 
 * I don't know how useful this can be since the security information is exposed, but it is a nice hack.
 */
req = new XMLHttpRequest();
var strXML = '<?xml version='1.0'?>' +
    '<AccessRequest xml:lang='en-US'>' +
    '<AccessLicenseNumber>YOURLICENSEKEY</AccessLicenseNumber>' +
    '<UserId>YOURUSERNAME</UserId>' +
    '<Password>YOURPASSWORD</Password>' +
    '</AccessRequest>' +
    '' +
    '<?xml version='1.0'?>' +
    '<TrackRequest xml:lang='en-US'>' +
    '<Request>' +
    '<TransactionReference>' +
    '<CustomerContext>sample</CustomerContext>' +
    '<XpciVersion>1.0001</XpciVersion>' +
    '</TransactionReference>' +
    '<RequestAction>Track</RequestAction>' +
    '<RequestOption>activity</RequestOption>' +
    '</Request>' +
    '<TrackingNumber>1Z12345E1512345676</TrackingNumber>' +
    '</TrackRequest>';
req.open('POST', 'https://www.ups.com/ups.app/xml/Track', false);
req.send(strXML);
document.write(req.responseText);

/*
 * This code on Mozilla browsers will retreive and post the raw XML information (you do need the
 * security information for UPS's website to make it work which is a bit of a security flaw).
 * Once you got the information, then you can parse it via Mozilla's or IE's XSLT processors,
 * or via regular DOM methods after parsing it into a DOM tree as follows
 */

var parser = new DOMParser();
var doc = parser.parseFromString(req.responseText, "text/xml");

/*
 * For Mozilla browsers, you also need to request a security permission from the user in order to access UPS's website.
 * A web proxy might be an answer to that problem but in any case here is the code
 */

netscape.security.PrivilegeManager.enablePrivilege("UniversalBrowserRead");