Apparel ItemSearch does not display ListPrice

admin — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:36:13 +0000

Today, I was noticing one of my Amazon sites was not displaying prices for *some* apparel items. Looking closely at the XML response coming back from AWS, I noticed that ItemAttributes->ListPrice->FormattedPrice was not included as well as OfferSummary->LowestNewPrice->FormattedPrice was missing as well. Price of any sort was completely missing in about 80% of my apparel listings when I do a ItemSearch.

After doing some Googlin’ I found others with similar problems. It’s definitely not a new problem, so I was glad there were solutions, so I wanted to post this in case others run across this issue. It might be in other SearchIndexes besides apparel.

The solution is to modify your ResponseGroup value in your request to AWS. Normally, I only ask for “Offers, Images,ItemAttributes”. What you need to do is include “Variations” as well. So my ResponseGroup looks like: “Offers,Images,ItemAttributes,Variations”

You should now see VariationSummary in your XML response. To access the price there you would look at VariationSummary->LowestPrice->FormattedPrice

Hope this helps!

Finding BrowseNodes for Amazon API search (AWS)

admin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:56:44 +0000

So, I’ve been hitting the Amazon sites real hard over the last month. With a combination of ReviewAZON, WPReviewSite and my own amazon store script, I’ve been picking niches and working on traffic. Today, I was looking at one of my good performing EPN store fronts, and I wanted to include Amazon products in there as well. The problem I was having was getting it targeted to the sub category. I knew the SearchIndex, but couldn’t figure out how to get the proper BrowseNode of the sub category. The solution is to do a BrowseNodeLookup call.

To do this, you first need to determine the main BrowseNode, basically the number related to the main category where your product is located in. To get this number, you may be able to see it in the URL, or use this matrix to get the proper BrowseNode based off of country:

http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/index.html?BrowseNodeIDs.html

Next, you need to query Amazon’s AWS and send this BrowseNode. You will receive a XML file containing all children related to this parent including name and BrowseNode.

Here is a basic function I wrote that will do a signed request for BrowseNodeLookup operation:

function find_browse_node_aws_signed_request($region, $params, $public_key, $private_key){
$method = "GET";
$host = "ecs.amazonaws.".$region;
$uri    = "/onca/xml";
$params["Service"]    = "AWSECommerceService";
$params["AWSAccessKeyId"] = $public_key;
$params["Timestamp"]    = gmdate("Y-m-d\TH:i:s\Z");
$params["Version"]    = "2009-03-31";
ksort($params);
$canonicalized_query = array();
foreach ($params as $param=>$value){
$param = str_replace("%7E", "~", rawurlencode($param));
$value = str_replace("%7E", "~", rawurlencode($value));
if($param == ‘ItemPage’ && $value == ‘x’){
$canonicalized_query[] = $param."=".$i;
}else{
$canonicalized_query[] = $param."=".$value;
}
}
$canonicalized_query = implode("&", $canonicalized_query);
$string_to_sign = $method."\n".$host."\n".$uri."\n".$canonicalized_query;
$signature = base64_encode(hash_hmac(’sha256′, $string_to_sign, $private_key, true));
$signature = str_replace("%7E", "~", rawurlencode($signature));
$request = "http://".$host.$uri."?".$canonicalized_query."&Signature=".$signature;
$ch    = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $request);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $response;
}

To call the function you would do something like this:

$resp = find_browse_node_aws_signed_request($country,
array("Operation"=>"BrowseNodeLookup",
"Service"=>"AWSECommerceService",
"BrowseNodeId"=>"111111111"
),
$pubKey,
$privKey);

$pubKey is your Associate Key ID (not your tracking ID) and the $privKey is your Secret AWS Key ID. You can do a var_dump($resp) to see the values of the returned array of values. After retrieving the BrowseNodeID, you can search within that category by passing ‘BrowseNode’ to your ItemSearch API call. Hope this helps!

Money-Code » aws

Apparel ItemSearch does not display ListPrice

Finding BrowseNodes for Amazon API search (AWS)