4. Data exchange actions
These actions allow the actual exchange of data between client and server.
For data exchange actions, both parameters (action and request) are mandatory.
The value of the request parameter (sent by the client) and the server response are XML documents following OTA2015A and using the XML root elements specified in the following table:
| known as (since) | usage | parameter action (string) |
parameter request and server response (XML documents) |
|---|---|---|---|
FreeRooms (since 2011-11) |
a client sends room availability notifications to a server |
|
|
GuestRequests (since 2012-05) |
a client sends a request to receive requests for a quote or booking requests from the server |
|
|
GuestRequests (Push) (since 2018-10) |
a client sends requests for a quote or booking requests to the server |
|
|
GuestRequests/Acknowledgments (since 2014-04) |
a client acknowledges the requests it has received |
|
|
SimplePackages (2012-05 until 2015-07b) |
this action has been removed in version 2017-10 |
||
Inventory/Basic (Push) (since 2015-07) |
a client sends room category information and room lists |
|
|
Inventory/Basic (Pull) (since 2017-10) |
a client requests room category information and room lists |
|
|
Inventory/HotelInfo (Push) (since 2015-07) |
a client sends additional descriptive content regarding room categories |
|
|
Inventory/HotelInfo (Pull) (since 2017-10) |
a client requests additional descriptive content regarding room categories |
|
|
RatePlans (since 2014-04) |
a client sends information about rate plans with prices and booking rules |
|
|
BaseRates (since 2017-10) |
a client requests information about rate plans |
|
|
AlpineBits® requires all XML documents to be encoded in UTF-8.
The business logic of an AlpineBits® server, i.e. how the server processes and stores the information it receives is implementation-specific.
The format of the requests and responses is, however, exactly specified.
First of all the requests and responses must validate against the OTA2015A schema.
Since OTA is very flexible regarding mandatory / optional elements, AlpineBits® adds extra requirements about exactly which elements and attributes are required in a request.
If these are not present, a server’s business logic is bound to fail and will return a response indicating an error even though the request is valid OTA2015A.
OTA2015A, for instance allows OTA_HotelAvailNotifRQ requests that do not indicate the hotel, this might make perfect sense in some context, but an AlpineBits® server will return an error if that information is missing from the request.
To aid developers, two AlpineBits® schema files (one XML schema file and one Relax NG schema file) are provided as an integral part of the specification in the AlpineBits® documentation kit.
The Relax NG file is somewhat stricter than the XML schema file as RelaxNG is intrinsically more powerful in expressing constraints that express how elements and attributes depend on each other.
Both AlpineBits® schema files are stricter than OTA2015A in the sense that all documents that validate against AlpineBits® will also validate against OTA2015A, but not vice versa.
The AlpineBits® documentation kit also provides a sample file for each of the request and response documents.
The latest AlpineBits® documentation kit for each protocol version is available from the official AlpineBits® website.