
Show HN: Paccurate – An API to put things in other things - cartonzshill
https://paccurate.io
======
cartonzshill
Hi folks. Paccurate is our first product after working freelance in the
logistics tech space for 5 years. The business has been off to a great start,
but we've had the most fun seeing the API used in hackathons and other
creative venues. Eager to see what applications HN can come up with.

Quickstart: Just paste this in your terminal.

curl -X POST -d '{ "itemSets": [{ "refId": 0, "dimensions": {"x": 5.5, "y": 6,
"z": 6}, "quantity": 3 }], "boxTypeSets":["fedex"] }' api.paccurate.io/

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adamfeldman
This looks nice!

~3 years ago I was still working in SMB/SME ecommerce IT and made an aborted
attempt at building automatic small-parcel rate shopping and optimization on
top of [https://www.teapplix.com](https://www.teapplix.com).

Even today it seems the big* SMB/SME players don't offer proper rate
optimization tools, likely due to contractual relationships with the carriers
which restrict that functionality.

*Stamps.com owns most of the major SMB/SME shipping tools: Stamps.com, Endicia, ShipStation, ShippingEasy, ShipWorks (+ upmarket tools like ShipEngine and Metapack and maybe more)

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cartonzshill
That's very interesting. We haven't had too much pushback along those lines at
least as we make our way upmarket. It might be because we aren't doing rating,
just predictive packing.

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verycleanpants
What is this that I'm looking at in the response?

~~~
cartonzshill
There's some deprecated gubbins in there mostly having to do with styling the
box images. You can set "includeScripts" to "false" to omit them. What's left
is a list of items and what boxes they go in, as well as the SVGs that show
how to pack them. Thanks for trying it out!

~~~
cartonzshill
For the lazy:

curl -X POST -d '{ "includeScripts": false, "itemSets": [{ "refId": 0,
"dimensions": {"x": 5.5, "y": 6, "z": 6}, "quantity": 3 }],
"boxTypeSets":["fedex"] }' api.paccurate.io/

~~~
adamfeldman
What's the minimal .html file required to turn the contents of the "svgs" key
into something I can look at?

~~~
cartonzshill
The <figure> element should just work inside a body tag. To pretty it up
though you will need some css targeting some of the child elements. For
example, to make the container have a dashed border like we have, you would
do:

line.volume-line { stroke: #666; stroke-dasharray: 2,1; stroke-width: 1; }

~~~
adamfeldman
Thanks. I was also having trouble figuring out how to decode the svg figure
element into plaintext I can throw into a text editor and open in the browser.
(I don't have any svg experience).

I checked the docs and switched the imageFormat to png and was able to see the
render.

It's awesome that with svg I could style elements of the provided image
however I want!

~~~
cartonzshill
Thanks! Yeah you can do some cool things with animating the svgs too, like
show animated packing instructions.

