Business Central Punch-Out implementation with cXML

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Hi Folks,
I'm currently working on developing and interface in Business Central with an external supplier who has an e-commerce.
For them the standard why to interact with external systems is with a punch-out connection with cXML.
The problem itself is not handle the cXML but the way their system response since they sand back data using a web browser post without any authentication.
I don't actually know how to handle it, we are on SaaS environment so we have the 2Auth mandatory on our API/Web Services.
Looking online for some hints I saw that for authentication for punch-out it's usually used something like a /cookie way/, but I don't know how to implement that.
According to this documentation https://punchoutcommerce.com/guides/punchout/cxml-punchout-setup-request/ we have to provide a URL that they can call with a POST call.
As I said the problem is how to handle the authentication.
The supplier has already developed an integration with Microsoft AX but obviously is not the same for Business Central and the documentation they provided is not enough for us.
In general how is the correct way to manage a punch-out connection in business central?
Anyone may have developed a some kind of connectors for this interface?

Thanks in advance
Luca

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Community member 10 on at

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Business Central Punch-Out implementation with cXML

Hi Zhu,
thank you for the response but I think there is a misunderstanding.
We don't call a URL of the supplier but we have to provide them our own URL for receive the cXML.
I'll try to explain better the punch-out process:
- We do a web service call to the SUPPLIER (ex. www.example.com/sendPunchOutSetup)
In this call we provide an XML body with some information like the username/password and is mandatory to provide a URL where they will send back the chart with the items in cXML format.
- The supplier return a response with a URL of their e-commerce with an active session (www.example.com/?sysid=SESSIONID)
- We open the URL (with a simple HYPERLINK) that opens a web page to the e-commerce with the already logged in user.
- The user can add items to the chart and buy stuffs, but when he tries to check-out instead of go to the payment page it calls our URL to send back the cXML with the url that we provided in the first step.

Try to imagine like I have an Amazon account, I call an Amazon web service with my credentials, Amazon send back a URL that opens a page with my session and my user already logged in.
I buy everything I want and when I try to check out instead of prompt me to the payment form it just call my web service to send me back the data of the items.
The problem is here, the call they do to our URL is without any authentication, they don't handle it, the punch-out standard doesn't handle it.
Punch-out standard seems to work with a cookie authentication.
So I don't know how to figure this out since with SaaS env the 2Auth is mandatory.
We tried with an Azure function without authentication but our customer is not satisfied because is not secure, the only way seems to be the cookie auth approach but how it that possible with BC or Azure functions?

Thanks again for the help.
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YUN ZHU 68,242 Super User 2024 Season 2 on at

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Business Central Punch-Out implementation with cXML

Hi, in other words, the partner's data is completely public? Can you access it without any authentication?

In BC, the following methods are mainly used to obtain external data.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/developer/methods-auto/httpclient/httpclient-data-type?wt.mc_id=DX-MVP-5004336

If no authentication is required, you should be able to obtain it directly.

For example,

Get Picture from public URL:

https://yzhums.com/17574/

Get IP Address from free wev service:

https://yzhums.com/21873/

Hope this can give you some hints.

Thanks.

ZHU

Business Central Punch-Out implementation with cXML

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