How to make a PHP XML/RPC call to UPC database - php

Question

hay i am working on barcode reader project when i call upcdatabase from my php script it give me errors. i use the php example provided by www.upcdatabase.com
the code is
<?php error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', true);
require_once 'XML/RPC.php';
$rpc_key = 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'; // Set your rpc_key here
$upc='0639382000393';
// Setup the URL of the XML-RPC service
$client = new XML_RPC_Client('/xmlrpc', 'http://www.upcdatabase.com');
$params = array( new XML_RPC_Value( array(
'rpc_key' => new XML_RPC_Value($rpc_key, 'string'),
'upc' => new XML_RPC_Value($upc, 'string'),
), 'struct'));
$msg = new XML_RPC_Message('lookup', $params);
$resp = $client->send($msg);
if (!$resp)
{
echo 'Communication error: ' . $client->errstr;
exit;
}
if(!$resp->faultCode())
{
$val = $resp->value();
$data = XML_RPC_decode($val);
echo "<pre>" . print_r($data, true) . "</pre>";
}else{
echo 'Fault Code: ' . $resp->faultCode() . "\n";
echo 'Fault Reason: ' . $resp->faultString() . "\n";
}
?>
when i check the $upc='0639382000393'; into upc data base view this then it works fine but i run this script into the browser then it give the following error Array
(
[status] => fail
[message] => Invalid UPC length
)

Answer 1

Unfortunately, their API appears rather short on documentation.
There are three types of codes the site mentions on the Item Lookup page:
13 digits for an EAN/UCC-13
12 digits for a Type A UPC code, or
8 digits for a Type-E (zero-supressed) UPC code.
Right after the page mentions those three types, it also says,
Anything other than 8 or 12 digits is not a UPC code!
The 13-digit EAN/UCC-13 is a superset of UPC. It includes valid UPCs, but it has many other values that are not valid UPCs.
From the Wikipedia article on EAN-13:
If the first digit is zero, all digits in the first group of six are encoded using the patterns used for UPC, hence a UPC barcode is also an EAN-13 barcode with the first digit set to zero.
Having said that, when I removed the leading zero from $upc, it worked as expected. Apparently the Item Lookup page has logic to remove the leading zero, while the API does not.
Array
(
[upc] => 639382000393
[pendingUpdates] => 0
[status] => success
[ean] => 0639382000393
[issuerCountryCode] => us
[found] => 1
[description] => The Teenager's Guide to the Real World by BYG Publishing
[message] => Database entry found
[size] => book
[issuerCountry] => United States
[noCacheAfterUTC] => 2011-01-22T14:46:15
[lastModifiedUTC] => 2002-08-23T23:07:36
)
Alternatively, instead of setting the upc param, you can set the original 13-digit value to the ean param and it will also work.