X-Cart and TaxCloud and SOAP

Recently we had to work on an X-Cart web project where the client wanted to interface with TaxCloud’s API to solve the problem of New York State’s convoluted sales tax rates.

New York applies sales tax based on several regions. Therefore to figure out which tax to apply to a NY customer, you need to first figure out to which tax region does the customer belong to based on zip code.

Fortunately TaxCloud solves this issue.

Unfortunately Pair Network does not include the SOAP library on their virtual/shared hosting plans which TaxCloud required. So although X-Cart was running nicely on Pair Networks, moving hosts was unavoidable.

So we had to move the customer to HostGator.com’s Business hosting account which does offer the SOAP library.

So the lesson here is that if you need the SOAP PHP library (or any special PHP library or function), check if a hosting plan meets all your requirements before selecting a web-host.