Print Stamps With Ruby!

I’ve just released Stamps - A Ruby gem for creating postage labels, calculate the shipping cost of packages, standardize domestic addresses via USPS CASS certified Address Matching Software, and track shipments using the Stamps.com Web Services API.

Quick Start

First, you will need to register for a (free) developer account at Stamps.com. Once you receive your test credentials and integration id, just plug them into the configuration block:

Stamps.configure do |config|
  config.integration_id = 'XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXXX'
  config.username       = 'STAMPS USERNAME'
  config.password       = 'STAMPS PASSWORD'
end

For a simple test, we can call Stamps.account to retreive information about the account. By default, Stamps will return all responses as a Hash.

Create a Stamp

First, we need to standardize the shipping address that complies with the USPS address formatting guidelines:

standardized_address = Stamps.clean_address(
  :address => {
    :full_name => 'The White House',
    :address1  => '1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW',
    :city      => 'Washington',
    :state     => 'DC',
    :zip_code  => '20500'
})

Now that we have a clean address we can create a new stamp. The Stamps.create! takes the sender and receiver address along with parameters on the rate:

stamp = Stamps.create!(
    :rate          => {
      :from_zip_code => '45440',
      :to_zip_code   => '20500',
      :weight_oz     => '6.5',
      :ship_date      => Date.today.strftime('%Y-%m-%d'),
      :package_type   => 'Package',
      :service_type   => 'US-FC'  # Flat-rate
    },
    :to            => standardized_address,
    :from => {
      :full_name   => 'Littlelines',
      :address1    => '50 Chestnut Street',
      :address2    => 'Suite 234',
      :city        => 'Beavervcreek',
      :state       => 'OH',
      :zip_code    => '45440'
    }
)

Hooray!

That’s it! Stamps will return a url of the stamp. Print it and ship it!

stamp[:url]

If you are interested in more detailed information, check out the repo on Github.