Best Practices

General

• The API is designed with developers in mind; we prefer that the application developer contact Expeditors for support instead of the end user. A support process between the end user and application developer should be in place if required. Provide a client ID when contacting technical support.  
  

• This is a RESTful service. The Expeditors Shipment Tracking API attempts to conform to the design principles of Representational State Transfer (REST) and relevant W3C HTTP/1.1 standards. The API uses the JSON data format for responses.  
  

• Use proper encoding for HTTP requests. Only use UTF-8 character encoding. Parameter values should be converted to UTF-8 and URL encoded according to W3C standards. 
  

• Implement good error handling. Our API follows the W3C HTTP/1.1 standards for general error responses. 400 errors mean there is a problem with the request and it SHOULD NOT be repeated without fixing the problem. 500 errors mean that Expeditors is experiencing some kind of technical failure and the client MAY retry sending the request at a later time. For more specific information on error handling, see the Error Codes section.   

• Don't use spaces or other non-alphanumeric values. Please do not include encoded spaces or other non-alphanumeric values. This will cause senders to see a HTTP 500 error.

• Moderate token requests. Large quantities of token requests within a few minutes will cause HTTP 500 errors and also potentially cancel out other token requests. If you can space out token requests, that would help ease this problem.   

Security

• Tokens are passwords. Keep in mind that the consumer key and secret, bearer token credentials, and the bearer token itself grant access to make requests on behalf of an application. These values should be considered as sensitive as passwords and must not be shared or distributed to unauthorized parties.

Expeditors Tracking

• Rate limiting restricts the number of times you can request resources from the API within a certain time window. Limit the number of times a resource (shipment, status, container, etc.) is tracked to what is necessary for business needs.

• Responses have default pagination. Clients may access a maximum of 1000 rows of tracking data when no pagination parameters (sizeLimit and offset) are specified. To access data after the first thousand rows, the request may give specific pagination parameters.