Alice Tms

You are operating the alice-tms CLI — a Haskell tool for the Alice TMS transport management API.

Prerequisites

The environment variable ALICE_TMS_API_KEY must be set. If a command fails with "ALICE_TMS_API_KEY environment variable not set", ask the user to set it.

The alice-tms executable must be installed (via cabal install). If the command is not found, run:

cabal install --overwrite-policy=always

Commands

Book a shipment (V2)

# From a JSON file
alice-tms book shipment.json

# From stdin (pipe or interactive)
echo '{ ... }' | alice-tms book

Book a shipment (V1)

alice-tms book1 shipment.json
echo '{ ... }' | alice-tms book1

Both book (V2) and book1 (V1) accept the same JSON body structure but differ in required fields and response. V2 returns additional fields (labelData, wayBillNo, trackAndTrace) in the response.

Required vs optional fields

Shipment-level required fields (both V1 and V2):

• pickupDate — date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• deliveryDate — date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• senderAddress — object (see address fields below)
• recipientAddress — object (see address fields below)
• fullExchangePallets — integer (use 0 if not applicable)
• halfExchangePallets — integer (use 0 if not applicable)
• quarterExchangePallets — integer (use 0 if not applicable)

Shipment-level optional fields:

• reference1, reference2, reference3 — all optional text
• waybillNo — optional text
• note — optional text, free-text comment (bemærkning) for the shipment
• collis — optional array (but you almost always want this)
• pickupTimeStart, pickupTimeEnd, deliveryTimeStart, deliveryTimeEnd — optional time (HH:MM:SS)
• services — optional array of text, special service requests (e.g. early delivery, offloading by hand)
• ready — optional boolean

Address fields (all optional in the Haskell type, but the API likely expects at least name/street/zip/city/country):

• name, street, zipCode, city, countryCode — ISO 2-letter country code (e.g. "DK", "SE", "DE")
• contactPerson, contactEmail, contactPhone, note

Colli fields (both V1 and V2): only weight is required. All other colli fields are optional.

Colli optional fields: type, description, barcodes, height, length, width, volume, loadMeter, dangerousGoods.

Colli type: Free-text string — the API does not enforce an enum. Default to "package" unless the user specifies otherwise. Other common value: "pallet".

Exchange pallets: These represent pallet exchange counts between sender and carrier. Set all three to 0 unless the shipment involves physical pallet exchange (common in Scandinavian/European logistics where carriers swap empty pallets for loaded ones).

Date defaults: If the user doesn't specify dates, default to pickupDate = today and deliveryDate = next business day. For Friday pickups, suggest Monday delivery. Always confirm the dates with the user before booking.

The JSON body is a BookShipmentRequest. Example:

{
  "pickupDate": "2025-06-15",
  "deliveryDate": "2025-06-16",
  "reference1": "ORDER-123",
  "note": "Please call before delivery",
  "services": ["early delivery", "offloading by hand"],
  "senderAddress": {
    "name": "Warehouse A",
    "street": "Industrivej 10",
    "zipCode": "8000",
    "city": "Aarhus",
    "countryCode": "DK",
    "contactPerson": "Hans Jensen",
    "contactPhone": "+4512345678"
  },
  "recipientAddress": {
    "name": "Customer B",
    "street": "Hovedgaden 5",
    "zipCode": "2100",
    "city": "Copenhagen",
    "countryCode": "DK"
  },
  "collis": [
    {
      "type": "package",
      "weight": 12.5,
      "length": 0.6,
      "width": 0.4,
      "height": 0.3,
      "barcodes": ["PKG001"]
    }
  ],
  "fullExchangePallets": 0,
  "halfExchangePallets": 0,
  "quarterExchangePallets": 0,
  "ready": true
}

Response includes trackingNumber and shipmentId — save these for subsequent commands.

Check booking status

alice-tms status -t <tracking-number-uuid>

Returns status, startedProcessing, failed, and completed timestamps.

Get label URL

alice-tms label -s <shipment-id-uuid>

Returns labelUri — a URL to download the shipping label.

Get tracking events

alice-tms events -s <shipment-id-uuid>

Returns waybillNo, trackAndTrace URL, and a list of scans with timestamps, scan types, barcodes, and GPS coordinates.

Important

Always ask for final confirmation before executing a booking (book or book1). Show the user a summary of the shipment (sender, recipient, dates, collis) and wait for explicit approval before running the command.

Typical workflow

1. Build a shipment JSON (write to a temp file or pipe directly)
2. Confirm — show a summary and get explicit user approval
3. Book it: alice-tms book shipment.json
4. Note the trackingNumber and shipmentId from the response
5. Check status: alice-tms status -t <trackingNumber>
6. Get label: alice-tms label -s <shipmentId>
7. Track events: alice-tms events -s <shipmentId>

Global options

• --base-url URL — override the API base URL (default: https://api.alicetms.net)

Units

• Dimensions (length, width, height): meters — e.g. 0.6 for 60 cm. Client-side validation rejects dimensions exceeding European trailer limits (length 14m, width 2.6m, height 3m) or negative values.
• Weight: kilograms

Collis JSON field notes

In the JSON payload, colli fields use short names: type, description, barcodes, height, length, width, volume, loadMeter, weight, dangerousGoods. The Haskell types use prefixed names (colliType, etc.) but Aeson serialization strips the prefix automatically.

Dangerous goods fields similarly use short JSON names: name, unNumber, tunnelCode, class, waybillString, packageGroup, transportCategory, imdg, liquid, environmental, netWeightKg, grossWeightKg, volumeM3, colliQuantity, packaging, point.

Error handling

• All output goes to stdout as JSON on success
• Errors go to stderr prefixed with error:
• HTTP errors show the status code and response body

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