This repository contains the command line program frank for buying
postage online.
The program supports the Deutsche Post service ('INTERNETMARKE'
a.k.a. '1C4A' a.k.a. OneClickApplikation-Webservice) for letters
and small packages. It uses the Python inema package for
communicating with that web-service (which uses a custom
SOAP flavour).
Since mid 2017 it is integrated with the inema package. That
means you can easily get frank via pip, e.g.:
$ pip3 install --user inema
Thus, this repository is the upstream development repository for
frank.
2016, Georg Sauthoff [email protected], GPLv3+
List all formats that have a height of 297 mm:
$ frank --list-formats x297
List all products that are called 'sendung' or so:
$ frank --list-products sendung
Preview a Büchersendung stamp (creates postage_YYYY-MM-DD.pdf):
$ frank --preview --product 78 --format 1
Frank and buy 2 stamps (create 2 page document postage_YYYY-MM-DD.pdf):
$ frank ---format 26 --product 79 'Joe User;Street 1;12345 City' \\
'Jane User;Fakestreet 2;67890 Fakestadt'
It's also fine to delimit the recipient lines with newline characters.
The program frank looks for system wide and user specific
config files that include account and default address
information.
For using the Deutsche Post webservice you need 2 things: a 'Portokasse' account (easy) and API credentials (tedious).
You can create a 'Portokasse', i.e. a pre-paid account, as part of creating an efiliale account. The 'Portokasse' can then be charged via bank transfer ('Lastschrift') or other means. Alternatively, you can also just register a 'Portokasse' account (see also).
The API credentials have to be requested separately. Basically you have to fill out some web-form, you get contacted by an operator for confirmation and then you have to follow-up with a request for the credentials. Or, you can directly write an email to the address of the Deutsche-Post web-service team.
Example of a local ~/.config/frank.conf:
[api]
id = your-partner-id
key = your-api-key
key_phase = 1
[account]
user = portokasse-user
password = portokasse-pw
[a.default]
first =
name = Firma ACME
street = Lindenallee
number = 3
zip = 12345
city = Bielefeld
The WSDL file of the Deutsche Post webservice is publicly available. Other service documentation is only available on request.
The webservice uses SOAP over HTTPS and implements a custom signing procedure for some headers. Basically the API key is not send as-is, instead the first 8 characters of the MD5 hash of the concatenation of API id, timestamp and key are send as signature (along the API id and timestamp in the clear). Each SOAP request must include this custom header.
This doesn't make much sense from a technical point of view, because the service already uses HTTPS, thus this weak signature mechanism doesn't improve the already established level of security.
It looks like the purpose of this mechanism is to make the key extraction a little bit harder for a local user who is able to add a private CA certificate and use a MITM-proxy on the service connection. This shouldn't be too effective, though, since the key still has to be accessed by any program that talks to the webservice.
See also:
- python-inema: Python module implementing Deutsche Post 1C4A Internetmarke API (Harlad Welte, 2016-07-23)
The frank program is licensed under the GPL v3 or later.