Implementing the DCSA Bill of Lading Standard (SI+TD)

This is a guide to implementing the Shipping Instructions (SI) and Transport Document (TD) modules of the DCSA Bill of Lading (eBL) standard version 3.0.0, written for the technical teams of DCSA adopting organizations.There are separate guides for implementing the Issuance module and for implementing the Surrender module of the standard.

Reference Documentation

To get acquainted with the standard, refer to the introductory Bill of Lading standard page.To understand the key concepts, user stories, use cases and data overview of the standard, refer to the Bill of Lading documentation page.For an overview of the business processes addressed by the standard, refer to the DCSA Industry Blueprint.To understand the data structures used by the standard and how they can be mapped to your own organization's data types, consult the Transport Document model in version 2024.Q3 of the DCSA Information Model.

Implementing the Standard

To get acquainted with the general principles applicable when implementing any DCSA standard, consult the DCSA API Design and Implementation Principles.To review the reference implementation of the Bill of Lading standard, created by DCSA to verify the standard and used for measuring the conformance of adopter implementations, consult the Bill of Lading module of the DCSA conformance GitHub repository.To ensure that your organization becomes a successful adopter in the DCSA Bill of Lading standard API ecosystem, use the DCSA conformance framework periodically throughout your implementation project, to measure the conformance of your implementation and to improve it as needed.You can use a DCSA conformance sandbox as a counterpart in your development, since it allows you to easily test the most relevant scenarios that your application needs to support.
Carrier Implementation
To implement the Shipping Instructions (SI) and Transport Document (TD) modules of the Bill of Lading standard API as a carrier, use your organization's technology stack to implement each of the "/v3/shipping-instructions" and "/v3/transport-documents" endpoints of the DCSA Bill of Lading OpenAPI specification page.
Shipper Implementation
To create and manage Shipping Instructions or to amend Transport Documents through the DCSA Bill of Lading standard API implementation of any carrier, use your organization's technology stack to build a backend API client application using the DCSA Bill of Lading OpenAPI specification page.As an alternative, you can also use directly the corresponding API specification page of one of the carriers with which you need to create and manage bookings through the DCSA Bill of Lading standard API.To optionally receive notifications through the DCSA Bill of Lading API SI / TD Notifications endpoints about the Shipping Instructions or Transport Documents of your organization from a carrier who offers notifications support, use your organization's technology stack to implement the "/v3/shipping-instructions-notifications" and "/v3/transport-document-notifications" endpoints of the DCSA Bill of Lading OpenAPI specification page and use the carrier's proprietary process to register your endpoints.