PullMonkey Blog

VIN API – PHP and XML Parsing

Thanks go to Michael for sharing his hard work with the rest of you VIN API and PHP developers 🙂
I hope this helps -

VIN API Examples for PHP and VB .NET

A few of our VIN API customers have been kind enough to take our Ruby and curl examples and come up with .NET and PHP implementations.
Here is a VB .NET example:

And for PHP, you have this:

Hope this helps and if you have examples for other programming languages, please let us know.

Vin API – Phase II

We've just finished adding A LOT more details to VIN API's result set. This time we've added things like MPG, MSRP, cargo room/volumn, etc. See the full list below, it is very comprehensive.

If you use ruby (look for a future post with .NET and PHP examples), and want the complete dataset, you would setup your ActiveResource like this:

And then call our API like this:

The only change (for those of you who have already implemented phase I) is to send in a "complete" parameter with value of "true" ... upon doing so, VIN API will send you the complete dataset versus the basic (and default) dataset.

The results would look like this (in XML) and be prepared because it is lengthy:

That's it, just thought I'd share VIN API's Phase II.

VIN API – VIN Decoder for anyone

UPDATES:
See Phase II details for complete dataset information.
Take a look at the PHP examples and the .NET examples.
And ... while it's been great being able to give this information away freely for about a year now, we have to share some of the cost with our users, so please read about our pricing model.
END UPDATES

VIN API came about through lots of work on a current project of ours - Mr. Quotey.  We are dealing with auto insurance and wanted a way to decode VINs.  The other solutions we found (API-wise) were too expensive for our small, unfunded startup.  So like the way most great things come about, we decided to build our own VIN decoding API.

Using VIN API:

This is explained in detail at VIN API's site, but I will give you a look at what it does here.

If you use Ruby on Rails like I do, then you have the option to use ActiveResource:

Then you can use it like this:

Current Limitations:

Right now each account is limited to 20 VIN requests a month, we are looking to take it slow and prevent abuse.  If you do need more VIN decodings a month, feel free to let us know at Mr. Quotey, we'd be happy to up the max for your account.

Where to next?:

It is too soon to really tell.  We'd like your feedback and to know if this service is useful.  If it gets enough buzz, we would probably pursue it a bit more and drop the monthly limitations.