Amazon Query

Amazon.com makes its product listings available through a REST interface. REST is an XML query protocol built entirely upon the HTTP request-response model. It uses query strings to pass arguments to the XML service. While I have no issues with a REST interface, I personally find it easier to use standard SOAP toolkits like SOAP::Lite to query Web services. These SOAP toolkits typically have XML parsing built-in, which makes it a little easier (IMHO) to traverse the response from the service.

That is why I built a SOAP gateway service to Amazon's REST interface. It is actually a very simple service (download the source below). All it does it unwrap a SOAP request with parameters passed in through the SOAP Body, compose an HTTP request with the corresponding URL, and return the response in a SOAP Envelope.

This service is available through the GNU Public License.

Resources

• SOAP::Lite Home
• Amazon Developer Forum
• REST
• Xmethods - Listing

Source

Examples

Example Search Request:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope 
    xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
    SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
    xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema">
  <SOAP-ENV:Body>
    <namesp1:query xmlns:namesp1="urn:AmazonQuery">
      <associates_id xsi:type="xsd:string">majordojo-20</associates_id>
      <product_group xsi:type="xsd:string">books</product>

      <keywords xsi:type="xsd:string">bar</keywords>
    </namesp1:query>
  </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>

Example Browse Request:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope 
    xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
    SOAP-ENV:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
    xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema">
  <SOAP-ENV:Body>
    <namesp1:query xmlns:namesp1="urn:AmazonQuery">
      <associates_id xsi:type="xsd:string">majordojo-20</associates_id>
      <product_group xsi:type="xsd:string">books</product>

      <category xsi:type="xsd:string">foo</category>
    </namesp1:query>
  </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>