Thanks for this!
R

Thank you MoksA for your example, it seems to works good.

But what is the ‘uri’ parameter in your soap declaration ?

As Nicolas said there is an official wsdl… Some php code to use it :

$client = new SoapClient(null, array(’location’ => “http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/api/checkVatPort?wsdl”,’uri’ => “http://test-uri/”));
$params = array(”countryCode” =>”FR”,”vatNumber”=>”00000000000″);
$result=$client->__soapCall(”checkVat”, $params);
var_dump($result);

You probably know this as it’s mentioned in the FAQ, but there is in fact an official SOAP web service provided by VIES (WSDL here: http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/api/checkVatPort?wsdl). We are using it on one of our web applications to allow online registration of companies. I don’t know if your own service is relying on it, or simply parsing the output of the “human-oriented” website.

I personally agree that your solution, being REST-based, is more elegant, but people might prefer SOAP or feel more comfortable using an “official” service.

In either case, I’m still trying to find a solution which allows applications to keep functioning even when the VIES site/service is down (which seems to be the case for the moment, at least for certain VAT numbers). One solution is to simply rely on syntax validation (check for example http://www.braemoor.co.uk/software/vat.shtml for a JS-based solution).

OK, I just added JSONP support (pass ?callback=nameOfCallback) and I’m now returning application/javascript so that it currently fits my use-case too.

It’s on purpose. I want people to be able to test out the API in the browser — even non-techies. I don’t think my accountant (whom I just sent the link to) would understand what to do with a JSON file download when she hits the site but she’ll still be able to use it in the browser at the moment manually.

When I get some time, I’ll add a separate JSON endpoint — this was something I threw together before breakfast this morning :).

$ curl -i http://isvat.appspot.com/GB/802311782/
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:19:03 GMT
Server: Google Frontend
Content-Length: 4

true