How to minimize rate requests to ShipperHQ

Overview

ShipperHQ tracks the amount of API requests made for an account to ensure accounts stay within their plan limits. When an account consistently exceeds these plan limits, we do not limit or block access to the API, but we do reach out to discuss and seek a resolution. This document helps users understand the number of requests they are sending, and how to keep unnecessary requests to a minimum.

How many requests is my account making?

We have a few tools to help users understand how many requests their account is making to the API:

• The Analytics page within the ShipperHQ Dashboard provides a breakdown of the number of requests for the account. You can use it to track your API usage over time.
• The ShipperHQ Logger comes with the ShipperHQ Magento 2 extension. It logs each request made to the API, and provides some additional relevant information. You can use it to see how many requests are being made while stepping through the order process.

Which log entries indicate an API request?

We request new estimates when the shipment details such as destination address or cart contents change. The requests made to ShipperHQ’s API generate a Transaction ID and you can view the Magento logs to see how many are generated while stepping through checkout. These are the following log requests:

• Rate request and result – These logs have a unique Transaction ID representing a request to the ShipperHQ API that count towards the account’s request limit, with the following notable exceptions:
  • Found Cached Rates in Magento Cache For This Cart – Not Requesting Rates From ShipperHQ – There is one “Rate request and result” log per such estimate, but this also appears if a previously cached rate is reused, in which case, no request is sent to the API. When a cached rate is reused, this is indicated by this message in the logs.
  • Ignoring rate request – Configuration settings are to ignore requests as zipcode is empty – Per core Magento checkout behavior, Magento runs estimate-shipping-methods each time the address is updated while filling in details.

How to reduce unnecessary API requests?

Magento 2

For Magento 2, you can prevent your checkout from making requests to the ShipperHQ API before a Zipcode is entered by ensuring the setting “Require Meaningful Address To Request Rates” is enabled (enabled by default).

This will involve navigating within your Magento 2 Admin Panel to:
Stores > Configuration > Sales > Shipping/Delivery Methods – under ShipperHQ > Advanced Settings.

Change the “Require Meaningful Address To Request Rates” setting from “No” to “Yes”. Then, save the config to apply the change.

WooCommerce

For WooCommerce, you can enforce users in checkout to fill the configured Required Fields before a request is made to the ShipperHQ API. This can be done by enabling the “Require Meaningful Address To Request Rates” option within your WooCommerce dashboard.

To enable this, navigate within WooCommerce to:
Settings > Shipping > ShipperHQ

Scroll down to “Require Meaningful Address To Request Rates” and select the checkbox to enable. Save to apply changes.

This feature, on both platforms, will help to significantly reduce the quantity of redundant API calls made in checkout.

Other Platforms

On all these platforms sending the request is controlled by the platform itself and there isn’t a mechanism to prevent a request unless a zip/postal code is entered. If you see such an issue with any of these platforms then this is likely caused by customizations to your store. For that, you will need to contact the developer of the checkout. If you are using the core checkout, then you will want to contact the support team of that platform, with the exception of WooCommerce. With a WooCommerce store, your will need to contact the developer working on that site.