Showing posts with label Developers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Developers. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

PHP and JavaScript SDKs Now Available

Bill & Pay is now making available SDKs for PHP and JavaScript. The SDK consists of a helper class that makes calling our API really easy along with an example of how to use it.

Download the Bill & Pay SDK


Let Us Write the Code for You


The "Try It" feature in the Bill & Pay API Documentation has been expanded to include the ability show the exact source code you would use to make a request through the SDK.

Here is how you use it:
The "Try It" form in the
Bill & Pay Documentation.


  1. Go to the Bill & Pay API Documentation.
     
  2. Go to the class and method you are interested in using.
     
  3. Expand the "Try It" section and fill out the form to specify the parameters you want to pass to the API method.
     
  4. Click "Generate XML Request". This will create the XML request that needs to be sent to the Bill & Pay API.
     
  5. Try out your method call by clicking the "Execute Request" button. The results will be shown below the generated XML.
     
  6. Once you have the XML request that works the way you want it to you can translate the XML request into the source code for your chosen SDK programming language. Just click the "Select an SDK language." drop-down list. Select your programming language that Bill & Pay provides an SDK for.
     
  7. The source code for the chosen programming language will appear below the XML request. You can copy the source code and paste it into your programming environment to use it immediately.
The Try It feature generates
the request XML.

A simple generated sample source code for
making an API method call using the
PHP version of the SDK.

Here is an example of the PHP SDK source code generated for a complex API method call:


$BPBiller = new BPBillerAPI();
$BPBiller.billerid = "99999";
$BPBiller.password = "xxxxxxxxx";
$customerinfo = $BPBiller->sendRequest(array('customerinfo' => array('limit' => array('rows' => '50', 'page' => '1'), 'field' => array('internalid', 'id', 'active', 'login', 'companyname', 'firstname', 'middlename', 'lastname', 'phone', 'billingaddress'), 'where' => array('active' => '1', 'enrolled' => '1'))));
if ($customerinfo !== false) {
    //Process response here using $customerinfo variable.
} else {
    //Handle errors here.
}


And the same API method call using source code generated for the JavaScript SDK:

var BPBiller = BPBillerAPI();
BPBiller.billerid = "99999";
BPBiller.password = "xxxxxxxxx";
BPBiller.sendRequest(customerinfo_response, {"customerinfo":{"limit":{"rows":"50","page":"1"},"field":["internalid","id","active","login","companyname","firstname","middlename","lastname","phone","billingaddress"],"where":{"active":"1","enrolled":"1"}}});
function customerinfo_response(customerinfo) {
    if (BPBiller.errorNumber == 0) {
        //Process response here using customerinfo variable.
    } else {
        //Handle errors here.
    }
}


Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Google Group for Developers

Today we are launching a Google Group for developers that are interested in integrating with Bill & Pay. This public forum will allow developers to talk with each other and the developers of Bill & Pay to get help, ask questions, and make suggestions.

Join Our Google Group



Friday, April 3, 2015

Developers: Making Your Life Easier

Integrating with another system can often be an "ugh!" moment in any developers life. Learning the way a new system works. Figuring out how to call a new API. Dealing with all sorts of weird edge cases. Scratching your head when what was working all of a sudden stops working.

Our API is Made to Make Developers' Lives Easier


We have worked with great APIs from other companies and really bad APIs from other companies, so we understand the pain when an API is anything other than great. Because of that we work hard to make sure our API is really great.

Easy to Understand Documentation


Our API documentation is straightforward, easy to read, and easy to understand. You can find the documentation here. We recommend you start by reading the "Sending Requests" article and looking at the "biller" class.

Helpful Tools


Our documentation has a "Try It" feature on every method's page. Try It gives you a web form you can fill out to specify the parameters for an API method. Clicking the "Generate XML Request" will open a new browser window with the exact XML request you specified ready to try. You don't need to guess how to format the request. Let us generate a request template for you that you can copy and paste into your own code.

Finally, you can click the "Execute Request" button to call the method live on our server. If a problem occurs processing your call our API returns sensible, informative error messages that make it easy to track down and resolve issues. You can manually edit the XML request on the Try It page and execute the call again to see what request works best for your use case.

XML Requests


All requests to our API are made using an easy to learn XML structure that you POST to our secure web server.

Response Formats


The API will return responses in XML format by default. You can also specify the following response formats if they are more convenient for your development purposes:
  • JSON - Receive responses in the JSON format for use in many development languages including JavaScript.
  • PHP - Receive responses in a format that you can pass to the PHP function unserialize() to retrieve a PHP array with the API response.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Developers: Why Integrate with Bill & Pay

Bill & Pay provides an open web-based API that offers several different ways you can integrate. We make great API documentation and tools a priority. So, to start off you can check out our developer documentation.

Instant Accounts Receivables


Developers creating a product that would benefit from a built-in Accounts Receivable system can integrate directly with Bill & Pay to manage customers, create and send invoices, and receive payments.

Integration can be as simple as provisioning new Bill & Pay accounts for your customers and embedding that account into your product.

You can also use the web-based API to perform automatic data synchronization between your product to:
  • Keep the customer list in Bill & Pay up-to-date with the customer list in your product.
  • Create new invoices and send them to customers for payment.
  • Record payments customers make through methods other than Bill & Pay.

Why build your own customer and invoice management system when you can integrate Bill & Pay and make commissions off payments made through your integration?

To try our API with a free trial account, sign up for Bill & Pay Easy Invoice today. We can extend your trial period beyond 30 days free of charge for development and testing purposes.

See the "biller" class in the API documentation for more information.

Custom Accounting System Synchronization


Our API can also be used to integrate your vertical-market accounting system with Bill & Pay so that you can quickly start offering your customers an invoice delivery and payment acceptance solution. Our API provides everything needed to synchronize your customers, payments, and invoices to Bill & Pay and post payments made online back to your system.

Web Notifications


We also provide web notifications from our server to yours to inform your application when events such as a new payment being occur. You can use these notifications to automatically synchronize between your product and Bill & Pay in the most effecient, event-driven method possible.


Single Integration Model


You can integrate between your system and Bill & Pay using individual credentials for a specific business setup with Bill & Pay. This makes custom solutions for individual businesses easy to implement.

App Integration Model


If your integration will be targeted at a larger market then you can implement the app authentication model. You use a single set of credentials unique to your app to make API calls to any business that has authorized your app to access their data.

Reseller API Structure


Become a reseller and you can make commissions from the Bill & Pay usage of your customers. There is even a reseller API that makes provisioning of new Bill & Pay businesses automatic. Your reseller account can be configured to automatically authorize API access for your app to all business accounts created through your reseller account.

See the "reseller" class in the API documentation for implementation information.