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The FoxyCart API

Before You Get Started With the API

Like any API, FoxyCart's API is geared towards advanced users only. If you're not comfortable with programming, you should probably get familiar with your language of choice first or look for professional assistance. Never test on a live store, as you can certainly create problems that could impact your customers or your revenue.

Connecting to the API

FoxyCart's API is partially RESTful, but for security reasons only supports POST requests at this point. GET requests are NOT supported, which cuts down on potential security risks (particularly with regard to how GET requests tend to get logged, cached, stored, and etc.).

The endpoint URL for your FoxyCart store will look like https://example.foxycart.com/api or https://secure.example.tld/api, depending on what your FoxyCart store URL is set to. All requests need the api_token passed in along with any request. Your API Token is the same as your datafeed encryption key, and can be set in the Advanced tab in your FoxyCart admin.

It is your responsibility to keep this key secure. If a malicious person finds your API key they will have access that they definitely should not have.

A successful API request will return a response similar to this:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<foxydata>
	<result>SUCCESS</result>
	<messages>
		<message>Customer Found</message>
	</messages>
	<customer_id>51</customer_id>
	<last_modified_date>2009-02-10 13:16:11</last_modified_date>
	<customer_first_name>brett</customer_first_name>
	<customer_last_name>florio</customer_last_name>
	<customer_company/>
	<customer_address1>555 Mulberry Dr.</customer_address1>
	<customer_address2/>
	<customer_city>Happyville</customer_city>
	<customer_state>CA</customer_state>
	<customer_postal_code>55555</customer_postal_code>
	<customer_country>US</customer_country>
	<customer_phone> </customer_phone>
	<customer_email>example@example.tld</customer_email>
	<shipping_first_name/>
	<shipping_last_name/>
	<shipping_company/>
	<shipping_address1/>
	<shipping_address2/>
	<shipping_city/>
	<shipping_state/>
	<shipping_postal_code/>
	<shipping_country>US</shipping_country>
	<shipping_phone/>
	<customer_password>97fad3230c7bca8cc37515c3de12e509</customer_password>
	<cc_number>xxxxxxxxxxxx1111</cc_number>
	<cc_exp_month>12</cc_exp_month>
	<cc_exp_year>2009</cc_exp_year>
	<shipto_addresses/>
</foxydata>

API Actions

Global Notes, Methods, and Parameters

  • All _list methods support a pagination_start parameter for paginating through your filtered result set. Along with the <messages> node with useful pagination information, there will be a <statistics> node which includes total records, filtered_total, pagination_start, and pagination_end. 070 shows 50 entries at a time, 071 defaults to 300 but in 071 you can also pass in an entries_per_page value to override it.
  • All _list methods can accept multiple filters.
  • Make sure you've selected the appropriate hashing method in the “advanced” tab in your FoxyCart admin, especially if you're using any customer_ API calls.

Customer

Methods

customer_get
Required Fields: customer_id or customer_email
Notes: Cannot be used to retrieve guest customer accounts.
customer_save
Required Fields:
  • customer_id or customer_email
  • customer_password or customer_password_hash is required for a customer_save action if the customer record is a new record (but is not required for updating an existing record).
Notes: When creating a user or updating a password it is strongly recommended to send the cleartext password in the customer_password parameter, due to the way FoxyCart handles password resets. Please see the notes below for additional information.
customer_list
Filter Options: customer_id_filter, customer_email_filter, customer_first_name_filter, customer_last_name_filter, customer_state_filter
customer_address_get
Required Fields: customer_id or customer_email
Notes: Only applicable for stores using multi-ship.
customer_address_save
Required Fields: customer_id or customer_email
Notes: Only applicable for stores using multi-ship.

Notes

  • The customer_password value:
    • When using customer_get method: Returns a HASH of the customer's password, NOT THE ACTUAL PASSWORD. You can set the hashing method in the “Advanced” tab in your FoxyCart admin.
    • When using the customer_save method you can pass the customer's password as cleartext. FoxyCart will create the password hash for you based on your chosen hashing method.
  • The customer_password_hash value: If you do not have the password in cleartext but would like to update the password, pass in customer_password_hash. Whether you pass in a customer_password or a customer_password_hash, the end result is the same: A hashed password will be returned on _get requests for the customer_password field.
  • The cc_number field will return a masked card number if a payment method is saved. Otherwise it will be empty.

Transactions

transaction_get
Required Fields: transaction_id
transaction_list
Filter Options:
  • transaction_date_filter_begin (YYYY-MM-DD), transaction_date_filter_end (YYYY-MM-DD)
  • is_test_filter, hide_transaction_filter, data_is_fed_filter (0 or 1), id_filter, order_total_filter, coupon_code_filter
  • customer_id_filter, customer_email_filter, customer_first_name_filter, customer_last_name_filter, customer_state_filter, shipping_state_filter, customer_ip_filter
  • product_code_filter, product_name_filter, product_option_name_filter, product_option_value_filter
transaction_modify
Required Fields: transaction_id
Accepts: data_is_fed (0 or 1)
Notes: Changing this bit has no impact on anything other than the value of this bit. (ie. It does not tell FoxyCart to refeed the datafeed to your endpoint)

Subscriptions

subscription_get
Required Fields: sub_token (either the token by itself or the complete sub_token URL)
subscription_cancel
Required Fields: sub_token (either the token by itself or the complete sub_token URL)
Notes: Sets the sub_enddate to the next day, effectively canceling the subscription. This way the subscription cancellation will still be included in the Subscription XML Datafeed. To deactivate a subscription immediately you can use the subscription_modify method.
subscription_modify
Required Fields: sub_token (either the token by itself or the complete sub_token URL)
Accepts:
  • start_date (YYYY-MM-DD) (The start_date is somewhat historical, and indicates the very first date a subscription processed.)
  • end_date (YYYY-MM-DD)
  • next_transaction_date (YYYY-MM-DD) (The next_transaction_date is reset with every subscription processing, whether successful or erroring.)
  • frequency (available options)
  • past_due_amount (decimal)
  • is_active (0, 1)
  • transaction_template (XSD)
subscription_list
Filter Options:
  • is_active_filter
  • frequency_filter
  • past_due_amount_filter (if you include this filter and give it a value (such as 1) it will return subscriptions with past due amounts greater than 0)
  • start_date_filter_begin, start_date_filter_end, next_transaction_date_filter_begin, next_transaction_date_filter_end, end_date_filter_begin, end_date_filter_end (YYYY-MM-DD)
  • third_party_id_filter (for PayPal Express Checkout recurring payments)
  • last_transaction_id_filter
  • customer_id_filter, customer_email_filter, customer_first_name_filter, customer_last_name_filter
  • product_code_filter, product_name_filter, product_option_name_filter, product_option_value_filter
subscription_datafeed
Notes: Passing the subscription_datafeed as the api_action to the API endpoint will immediately re-feed the Subscription XML Datafeed to your already configured XML datafeed endpoint.

Example

Here's a very rough example of how to use the API using PHP:

$foxy_domain = "myfoxydomain.foxycart.com";
$foxyData = array();
$foxyData["api_token"] = "XXXXX your api / datafeed key here XXXXXX";
$foxyData["api_action"] = "customer_save";
$foxyData["customer_id"] = "12345";
// OR use the email:
//$foxyData["customer_email"] = "customer@example.com";
$foxyData["customer_password"] = "my new password";
 
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "https://" . $foxy_domain . "/api");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $foxyData);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 5);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 15);
// If you get SSL errors, you can uncomment the following, or ask your host to add the appropriate CA bundle
// curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
$response = trim(curl_exec($ch));
 
// The following if block will print any CURL errors you might have
if ($response == false) {
	print "CURL Error: \n" . curl_error($ch);
} else {
	print "Response to customer save of " . $foxyData['customer_email'] . "\n";
	print $response;
}
curl_close($ch);
 
$foxyResponse = simplexml_load_string($response, NULL, LIBXML_NOCDATA);
print "<pre>";
var_dump($foxyResponse);
print "</pre>";

Language Specific Considerations

Ruby on Rails (RoR)

If you have difficulty with httparty or ActiveResource, try putting the POST request in the :body and not the :query.

Using CURL to Test the API

You can always use CURL to test the API. Here is an example command line CURL request:

curl -d "api_token=PUT_YOUR_API_KEY_HERE&api_action=customer_get&customer_email=john.doe@example.com" https://example.foxycart.com/api

You'd obviously need to insert your own values in that call, but it's provided here for reference. Using CURL can be handy if you just want to get a customer ID quickly, or test to ensure data is being returned as expected.

Here's an example to retrieve a transaction:

curl -d "api_token=PUT_YOUR_API_KEY_HERE&api_action=transaction_get&transaction_id=1234567890" https://example.foxycart.com/api

And here's how to refeed the subscription XML datafeed:

curl -d "api_token=PUT_YOUR_API_KEY_HERE&api_action=subscription_datafeed" https://example.foxycart.com/api

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