I initiated the integration of DVLA’s Vehicle Enquiry Service (VES) API into my application by obtaining the necessary API key. Following this, I explored the API documentation and implemented a PHP example from the DVLA’s documentation.
<?php
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
CURLOPT_URL => "https://driver-vehicle-licensing.api.gov.uk/vehicle-enquiry/v1/vehicles",
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 0,
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "POST",
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS =>"{\n\t\"registrationNumber\": \"AA19AAA\"\n}",
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
"x-api-key: REPLACE WITH YOUR API KEY",
"Content-Type: application/json"
),
));
$response = curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);
echo $response;
?>Code Block: VES PHP Example
Using the env file to load in my API key: I was getting a system error
Call to undefined function curl_init()
After making sure I had curl installed, and a lot of googling, and enabling the curl extension in the php.ini file nothing was working.
After creating a phpinfo file I seen that php was still loading the configuration files from php8.1.
I used the linux command sudo a2dismod php8.1 and restarted Apache.
Whoo! I was no longer getting that error.
{"message":"Forbidden"} was my new error.
I looked at my emails to make sure I had copied over the correct API key, and they had sent me two emails, one with a TEST API key which was the key I was using, changing it to the other API key I got back the following response:
{"registrationNumber":"AA19AAA","taxStatus":"Taxed","taxDueDate":"2024-07-01","motStatus":"Valid","make":"MERCEDES-BENZ","yearOfManufacture":2019,"engineCapacity":1332,"co2Emissions":126,"fuelType":"PETROL","markedForExport":false,"colour":"WHITE","typeApproval":"M1","revenueWeight":1945,"euroStatus":"EURO 6 DG","dateOfLastV5CIssued":"2020-07-17","motExpiryDate":"2024-07-18","wheelplan":"2 AXLE RIGID BODY","monthOfFirstRegistration":"2019-07"}Code Block: VES JSON Response
For further testing, I created a DvlaController using Artisan. I moved all the code into the new controller,
class DvlaController extends Controller
{
public function index()
{
return view('pages/dvla-test');
}
public function getVehicleInfo(Request $resquest, $registration)
{
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
CURLOPT_URL => "https://driver-vehicle-licensing.api.gov.uk/vehicle-enquiry/v1/vehicles",
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 0,
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "POST",
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS =>"{\n\t\"registrationNumber\": \"$registration\"\n}",
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
"x-api-key: " . $_ENV['DVLA_API_KEY'],
"Content-Type: application/json"
),
));
$response = curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);
return view('pages/dvla-test', [
'dvla-json' => $response,
]);
}
}
Code Block: DVLA Controller Class
Changed the routes
Route::get('/dvla-test', [DvlaController::class, 'index']);
Route::put('/dvla-test', [DvlaController::class, 'getVehicleInfo'])->name('dvla-test.getVehicleInfo');Code Block: Routes to the dvla test page
And created a simple form to post data too.
<x-app-layout>
<div class="sm:m-64">
<form method="POST" action="{{ route('dvla-test.getVehicleInfo') }}" class="p-6">
<label for="registration">Registration Number:</label>
<input id="registration" type="text" name="registration" />
<div class="pt-6">
<x-primary-button>
{{ __('Get Details') }}
</x-primary-button>
</div>
</div>
</x-app-layout>Code Block: Form information
Testing this I got back an error: The POST method is not supported for route dvla-test. Supported methods: GET, HEAD, PUT.
I forgot to add the @csrf and @method(‘put’) at the top of the form. I was still getting the same error, so I changed the route to Route::post() and removed the @method(‘put’).
Now I was getting too few arguments to function, so I removed the $registration argument, I was still getting issues with this, so changing the syntax around and still getting nowhere. When I looked at my form, I noticed I forgot to add a closing tag to the `