Destination Sales Tax (Streamlined Sales Tax) - Retail Sales Tax Tools and Solutions for E-commerce

Washington State Tax Rate Lookup - Free PHP Code!

Only July 1, 2008, Washington State came out with a very simple URL interface for looking up destination tax rates. Below is the PHP code for the PHP class WAXMLParser, which simply takes in the street address, city, and 5-digit zip code of the address you will be shipping your product to, contacts the dor.wa.gov server, reads the XML-based response from the server, and returns the tax information in an array. To use the code, copy it from the text box below, save it as a file, and integrate it into your shopping cart. All we ask for in return is that if you like our code, you add our link to your site (html for the link is in the textbox too).

The Code

<a href="http://www.destinationtax.com" title="Solutions for the Destination Sales Tax Question">destinationtax.com</a>
                <?php
/********************************************************************************************************
 * Class WAXMLParser                                                                                    *
 * cURLs to dor.wa.gov, obtains XML response from server, and parses it into a usable array of
 * destination-based sales tax data
 ********************************************************************************************************
 * Written by Jerry Higbee
 * Property of JMH Online Retailers
 * May not be re-distributed without consent.
 * 2008 JMH Online Retailers
 * Email questions to info@destinationtax.com
 * http://www.destinationtax.com
 *******************************************************************************************************/
 class WAXMLParser{

// Members
		var $type;
		var $request_url;
		var $sa1;
		var $city;
		var $zip;
		var $rate_data;
		var $simple_xml;
		var $rate_info = array();

// Constructor
		function __construct($address,$city,$zip){
			$this->request_url = "http://dor.wa.gov/AddressRates.aspx?output=xml&";
			$this->type = $type;
			$this->sa1 = $address;
            $this->city = $city;
			$this->zip = $zip;

$data ="addr=".urlencode($this->sa1)."&city=".urlencode($this->city)."&zip=".urlencode($this->zip);

// Start a cURL session and send the XML data
			$data = trim($data);

if($handle = curl_init($this->request_url.$data)){
				curl_setopt($handle,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
				curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
	            curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_FORBID_REUSE, 1);
				curl_setopt($handle, CURLOPT_FRESH_CONNECT, 1);

if($this->rate_data = curl_exec($handle)){
					curl_close($handle);
					return TRUE;
				}
				else{
	                $this->__destruct;
					exit('Error executing cURL session. <a href="javascript:history.go(-1)">Go Back</a>');
				}
			}
			else{
				$this->__destruct;
				exit('Error initializing cURL session. <a href="javascript:history.go(-1)">Go Back</a>');
			}
		}

public function setSimpleXML(){
		$xml = simplexml_load_string($this->rate_data);
		// addressline tag
		foreach($xml->addressline[0]->attributes() as $key=>$value){
			$this->rate_info[$key] = $value;
		}
		// rate tag
		foreach($xml->rate[0]->attributes() as $key=>$value){
			$this->rate_info[$key] = $value;
		}
	}
    // Get the corrected XML-formatted data returned by the USPS server
	public function getXMLRateData(){
		return $this->rate_data;
	}

// Get the array of address information returned from the parser
	public function getParsedData(){
		return $this->rate_info;
	}

}
 ?>
 ********************************************************************************
 * Below is a the way you would call the function in your shopping cart
 ********************************************************************************
<?php
	include('classes/WAStateRateParser.inc.php');
	$rate_look = new WAXMLParser('522 W 1st Avenue','Spokane','99201');
	$rate_look->setSimpleXML();
	$my_lookup = $rate_look->getParsedData();
?>

Also included in the code is a sample of the way you would call the function to get rate information returned. If you look at the variable $mylookup, it is an associative array that contains all of the information from your tax rate lookup. To get a good idea of what is contained in the array, try adding print_r($my_data);. Now that you have the array of data, you can use it to make calculations, build a report database, or whatever you need for your tax collection purposes.