Diagnose and resolve DHL Express MyDHL API rate and shipment validation errors before booking a shipment
domain: developer.dhl.com · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Call the MyDHL API rates/products lookup first to confirm which services and special service codes are actually available for the origin-destination pair, weight, and dimensions before attempting shipment creation.
Submit the shipment request with all required fields; MyDHL API validates in two stages — first schema-level validation (data cardinality and format), then business-rule validation against product/service compatibility.
If a special service code is rejected as unavailable (e.g. a Saturday-delivery-type service not offered on that lane), re-check availability via the rates/products lookup rather than retrying the identical payload.
Ensure numeric fields such as total net weight, total gross weight, price, and net value are positive, non-zero values, since DHL enforces stricter validation on these fields.
Parse the full result-message array returned on error — MyDHL API can return multiple validation and business-rule messages in a single response rather than failing on just the first error.
Known gotchas
A rate quote does not guarantee the same service will be accepted at shipment-creation time if weight, dimensions, or additional services differ even slightly from what was quoted.
Invoice line items for freight and insurance are shown as distinct charges rather than folded into a generic 'other charges' bucket, so invoice-parsing logic should not assume a fixed small set of charge categories.
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