While many of our resellers like the easy setup and customisability of HostPay, some of our resellers prefer to use their own systems which interact directly with our back-end systems via the API we provide. We constantly keep an eye out for potential improvements to make, and welike to implement features suggested by our resellers whenever possible.This time around, a few reseller suggestions have led us to make some big changes.

EPP

The main result of these changes is the API now speaks EPP*, on the standard EPP port. We really hope this will help resellers who are already set up to use EPP to sell and transfer domain names with us.Since EPP is a protocol and has specific requirements, all the other functions have also been updated to use different syntax. This should make it much easier to get a working implementation if you have a generalised EPP module available to you.

If you already use the API, don’t worry – the old API is still running on the old ports, and we aren’t in a hurry to get rid of it, it just won’t get the new features.

EPP Compatibility Changes

The most widespread change is that the syntax is different: we now use

not

at the top level, for example. This means that if you’re using existing code, you’re best off switching to a third-party EPP library (or our downloadable modules) to handle the most of the work.

EPP requires alphanumeric unique identifiers for virtually all objects.To accommodate this, we have added unique identifiers in several places and changed the few places where we previously referred to item IDs to use unique identifiers instead, eg: de9c9da15eec8961

Although we have always tried to be EPP-like, the actual EPP log in process is quite different to what we used before. Previously, we would load in modules as soon as you mentioned them in your code; now, you have to actually say what modules you will use on login. If you don’tmention any, you won’t be able to log in at all. Also, we now use anactual username (

) and password (). You’ll find both of these listed at https://customer.heartinternet.uk/manage/apiFinally, EPP allows the client to provide transaction IDs and requires the server to log them. We’d recommend that you come up with your own unique transaction IDs (eg. sequential numbers) and routinely log them,as that will make it far easier to identify your transaction if you ever need to contact support.

Add-ons

We’ve had a big push to make more data about add-ons available through the API. You can now list standard standalone mailboxes, Web BuilderPlus allowances, personal secure server instances, email anti-virus services and virtual nameservers. You can also see if a domain name hasour privacy service in the response from the new

command.

Domain Name Information

In addition to the standard information required, we now identify domain names which are not registered through us, i.e. those which we list as”references”.