Connecting an ASP.NET application to QuickBooks Online Edition

Question

I am trying to create an ASP.NET page that connects to QuickBooks Online Edition, read a couple of values, and display the results. So far I have downloaded the QuickBooks SDK but I have been unable to find a simple step-by-step example on how to create an asp.net page to connect to QuickBooks Online. The QuickBooks SDK documentation and the SDK itself is very confusing and overwhelming. Anyone know of a simple step by step tutorial on where to get started... or maybe a hint on the very first thing to do.

Answer 1

The outline of what you have to do are outlined in Chapter 7 of the QBSDK documentation (at least in the 7.0 version of the SDK that I have). You have to open a test account and get permission to connect to their servers.

Once you have your account setup, the basic authentication procedure consists of redirecting your user to the QuickBooks Online site to log in, and once the user has done that, QuickBooks calls back your application with an HTTPS post with a ticket, which is basically a session handle that you can use for your requests, so that the system knows you are authenticated. When you get that response, you parse it and send your own login request to the system based on what you got back.

Then (if I understood the documentation correctly) you are basically doing Https POSTS of xml files with the QuickBooks requests, and you get XML responses that you have to parse to get the data you want.

I hope that gets you started.

The rest of the SDK is documentation (which you will need to know how to form your requests and parse your responses) and everything else is concerned with how to communicate with the desktop product. The only thing you are going to need from the rest of the documentation is how to do error handling, which is really only important if you are posting data to QuickBooks. If you are just reading, it doesn't matter (either your request works out or it doesn't, you don't need to worry about if you need to retry or if that would result in duplicate data).

EDIT: Given your specific use case I see two options. (You aren't crazy, just not the typical QuickBooks Online scenario).

One is to programatically hit up their login page and submit the credentials as if you were a user. I'm sure its not "supported" but it would likely work.

The other is to cache the results (which you should probably do anyway) and have an admin screen where someone does log into QuickBooks online and update the results every morning or evening or whatever makes sense.

In most small businesses, they are going to opt for the first option, but the second one is going to work more consistently, robustly and actually be supported by Intuit if you have an issue.

Answer 2

Yishai's answer is partially correct, but not entirely.

You can have your ASP .NET application log in and issue requests without having to send the user over to the QuickBooks Online log in page if you make sure to set the security preferences correctly when you connect up your application to QuickBooks Online Edition.

During the application registration process/connection process, it will ask you if you want to turn on or off login security with a prompt as below. You must tell it you want to turn off login security if you want to be able to access QuickBooks Online Edition data without forcing the user to log in every time. The prompt is something like:

"Do you want to turn on login security?"

You must select: "No. Anyone who can log into [Application Name] can use the connection".

Outside of that, Yishai is correct about the process. To re-iterate, in a nutshell:

• Register for a QBOE account
• Register your integrated application with Intuit's AppReg service
• Visit a specific link to tie your AppReg application to your QBOE account (make sure you turn off login security when it asks you!)
• Make HTTPS POST requests to Intuit's servers to sign on using the connection ticket Intuit will provide you with
• Make HTTPS POST requests to send qbXML requests to Intuit's servers, which you can use to add, modify, delete, and query records within QuickBooks Online Edition.

There is some additional documentation and some example requests on my QuickBooks development and integration wiki, specifically the QuickBooks Online Edition integration page.

I have built a solution that does what you're asking in PHP which adds, modifies, and queries data within QuickBooks Online Edition without requiring the user to log in everytime, and it works like a champ. It pushes and pulls order data between a PHP shopping cart (VirtueMart) and QuickBooks Online Edition. The PHP code is available here: QuickBooks PHP Framework

As a side note, unless you're very familiar with generating SSL certificates and sending them via HTTPS POSTs, you'll save yourself a whole lot of trouble by using the DESKTOP model of communication, and not the HOSTED model. Just make sure to keep your connection ticket securely encrypted.

Also, Yishai's suggestion to: "One is to programatically hit up their login page and submit the credentials as if you were a user. I'm sure its not "supported" but it would likely work." goes specifically against the security/developer guidelines Intuit and the SDK set forth. If they catch you doing that, they'll ban your application from connecting to QuickBooks.

Answer 3

Here are all the steps I took to get this working. Special thanks to Keith Palmer for his comments, answers, and his website which really helped me get this working.

1. Register your application at http://appreg.quickbooks.com. This will give you your App ID and Application Name. I used these settings:

   • Target Application: QBOE
   • Environment: Production

   • Application Type: Desktop

     • (using Desktop made things much easier as far as not needing certificates)

   • A verification key is sent to your email address which you need to enter on page 2 of this wizard.

2. Set up your QBOE Connection. Once you finish registering your application in Step 1, you will then have an Application ID. Use this ID in the url below to set up your QBOE Connection:
   • https://login.quickbooks.com/j/qbn/sdkapp/confirm?serviceid=2004&appid=APP_ID
   • NOTE: Make sure to replace APP_ID in the above url with the Application ID that was created when you registered your application.
   • The wizard will take you through the following steps:
     1. Specifying a name for your connection.
     2. Granting Access Rights - I gave All Accounting rights since this was easiest.
     3. Specify Login Security - I turned Login Security Off. This is important since it makes submitting the xml to the QBOE much easier since you do not need to get a session ticket for each user.
     4. You will then be given a Connection Key.
3. At this point you now have the 3 important pieces of information in order to gain access to your QuickBooks Online Edition (QBOE) account.
   • Application Name
   • Application ID
   • Connection Key

4. Post the XML to QBOE with the 3 pieces of access information and the actual request into your QBOE database. Here is sample c# code that will post to the QBOE gateway. This will return all customers in your QuickBooks database. Make sure to update the xml below with your Application Name, Application ID, and Connection Key.

   string requestUrl = null;
   requestUrl = "https://apps.quickbooks.com/j/AppGateway";
   
   
   HttpWebRequest WebRequestObject = null;
   StreamReader sr = null;
   HttpWebResponse WebResponseObject = null;
   StreamWriter swr = null;
   
   
   try
   {
       WebRequestObject = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(requestUrl);
       WebRequestObject.Method = "POST";
       WebRequestObject.ContentType = "application/x-qbxml";
       WebRequestObject.AllowAutoRedirect = false;
   

   string post = @"

   <?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""utf-8"" ?>
   <?qbxml version=""6.0""?>
   <QBXML>
   <SignonMsgsRq>
   <SignonDesktopRq>
   <ClientDateTime>%%CLIENT_DATE_TIME%%</ClientDateTime>
   <ApplicationLogin>APPLICATION_LOGIN</ApplicationLogin>
   <ConnectionTicket>CONNECTION_TICKET</ConnectionTicket>
   <Language>English</Language>
   <AppID>APP_ID</AppID>
   <AppVer>1</AppVer>
   </SignonDesktopRq>
   </SignonMsgsRq>
   <QBXMLMsgsRq onError=""continueOnError"">
   <CustomerQueryRq requestID=""2"" />
   </QBXMLMsgsRq>
   </QBXML>

   ";

       post = post.Replace("%%CLIENT_DATE_TIME%%", DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss"));
       XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
       xmlDoc.LoadXml(post);
       post = xmlDoc.InnerXml;
       WebRequestObject.ContentLength = post.Length;
       swr = new StreamWriter(WebRequestObject.GetRequestStream());
       swr.Write(post);
       swr.Close();
       WebResponseObject = (HttpWebResponse)WebRequestObject.GetResponse();
       sr = new StreamReader(WebResponseObject.GetResponseStream());
       string Results = sr.ReadToEnd();
       }
   finally
       {
           try
           {
               sr.Close();
           }
           catch
           {
           }
   
   
       try
       {
           WebResponseObject.Close();
           WebRequestObject.Abort();
       }
       catch
       {
       }
   }
   
   
   

5. Couple things to note:

   • As pointed out by Keith Palmer the qbxml version needs to be 6.0 (even though the IDN Unified On-Screen Reference shows 7.0)
   • I needed to include the onError="continueOnError" attribute.
   • Setting the WebRequestObject.ContentLength property is required.
   • Content Type needs to be "application/x-qbxml"
   • And finally I received many "The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad Request." exceptions which were not helpful at all but in the end I was able to trace them to something wrong with the xml. So if you get this exception look to your xml as the source of the problem.