Respax XMLAgent Portal - is a XML-API enabling system developers to directly interact with the RON network and all the participating Tour Operators. The XMLAgent is a system-to system portal interface connecting in real-time to the major Australian and New Zealand tour operators as a single, easy-to-use gateway booking API.

The XMLAgent interface supports real-time availability and immediate confirmations directly into the tour operator's reservation systems. It also includes full access to tour operator content including full tour product info with details, inclusions, prices, availability, contact details and more.

It's important to note that each operator is in full control of which product they wish to publish on the network. At no time, can the XMLAPI access areas of their reservation system that is sensitive and has not explicitly been published.

XMLAgent provides access via a XMLRPC service running on central Respax servers. The XMLRPC functions can be accessed using most XMLRPC clients from most enviroments including PHP, VB, ASPX, ASP. Basically any client that provides a XMLRPC client tool.

The XMLRPC is based on an advanced caching system on our servers without the need to reach out to the operator every time. This ensures minimum latency as the cache is constantly updated on the servers and decreases minimum reliance on the remote operator servers being up and available on the network. Some tasks like confirming reservations and checking availability goes directly to the operator.

Respax XMLAgent uses the RON network to connect to the tour operators.

Generally about the functions - This documentation assumes that you are familiar with how XMLRPC works. While we will give examples in the detailed description of the API, we do not attempt to describe exactly how the XMLRPC server and clients parse parameters and return datasets as this can vary from client to client.

The XML Agent requires that you login over the XMLLogin before you are able to access the functions. This automatically maps you to each tour operator and maintain whatever commission and pricing relationship that you have with the individual tour operators.

Each Tour Operator is defined as a Host. Each host has a unique induvidual HostID on the RON network. Tour Codes by themselfs are not unique. Most functions require that you pass both the HostID and TourCode to retrieve and write information to their system.

Detailed XMLRPC API function reference

Checking Availability
Availability can easily be checked over the network. Specific hostid and tourcode as well as basis and subbasis will need to be parsed to retrieve the availability. This area has minimum caching, normally around 15 minute cache. You should minimise the availability checking as it does impede the performance of your query as it's a reasonably heavy query.

Availability is always checked before a booking is commited anyway.

Detailed XMLRPC API function reference

Reading and Writing Reservations.
The API supports writing of new reservations. Payments are according to your arrangment with each tour operator. Most commonly, payments are added OnAccount which means that you have taken all the money and the operator will invoice you later. On successfully committing a booking, the Write function will return a unique confirmation number for the Operator. You will need to store a combination of HOSTID and confirmation number as a unique identifier in your system.

When you commit a booking over the XMLAGENT API , the following happens:

• Availability is checked with the tour operator to ensure that the booking can be confirmed.
• The booking is inserted directly into the remote operators database and a confirmation number is returned. As you have collected full amount on your site, the operator will invoice you the difference between commission and tour gross value.
• A record of the booking is also stored in a separate portal database which you have access to and can report on at a later stage. A record is also kept with us so we can keep track of the transaction count

The API supports search and edit of existing bookings. Ofcourse, you can only access bookings made by your organisation.

Readinng and Writing reservations is not cached on the server but accesses the remote operators system directly

Detailed XMLRPC API function reference

Collecting Tour Content
The XMLAgent API lets you access tour content for all products published by the Tour operators including Titles, Long Descriptions, Include text, Addtion Text, Special Levy/Fee comments, Tour pricing and images.

Images are downloaded over the XMLRPC client in Base64 format and needs to be decoded to binary fomat before it can be used as a image file.

The Tour content section is heavily cached as it represents the largest download and least changing content. THis means that your xmlrpc call will rarely touch the remote operators system and will be less sensitive to tour operator server issues.

Detailed XMLRPC API function reference

RON is completely free to implement and use.