Amazon API

Why don’t you use allconsuming.net?
Ricardo

I’m looking at that site, but it’s not quite what I’m looking for. I’m refering to something similar to the MT plugin for Amazon. Something that i could incorporate into the site.

Yes that would be a very interesting hack.

What is this again? How does it work?

Links to check out:
https://mtamazon.sourceforge.net/
https://mt-plugins.org/archives/entry/mtamazon.php
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aws/landing.html
https://scripts.incutio.com/amazon/
https://erikbenson.com/index.cgi?node=Amazon+API

If nobody beats me to it, maybe I can look into making an Amazon API plugin for WordPress after I finish adding MetaWeblog and MovableType API support to the xmlrpc interface.
The Technorati API will be fun to play with, too.

We need something for the hacks and utilities section anyway, it’s pretty anemic now.

I’d like to see the same thing. It’s a pain having to add all the details by hand to my book list section.

I am *nearly* finished with a WP media collating widget. Should be done within 24 hrs.
It’ll sit in the admin section of WP and on the toolbar once I’ve shoe-horned it in.
Enter ISBN/ASIN and *pop*, data and image link retrieved from Amazon by parsing their HTML output. This is then stored in a DB table. (Creation/Installation of relevant files is what I’m working on at the moment.) No associate ID’s required if you don’t have one, if you do, feel free hack that support in yourself. I didn’t know about the associate ID thing before I started coding, so d’oh.
As for output, I don’t know what is par for the course so I’ll use a couple of “template style” calls to dump info to the user like most of the existing WP functions.
So far it’ll print the most recent X books in your list, based on the parameter passed to the output function, though I may extend it to allow for users to choose what they display with a little more finesse.
Oh, it also handles all EBooks, Music and DVD’s, so you can display “What I’m Reading”, “What I’m Listening to” and “What I just Watched” if you want.
It does not make tea.
Demo will be available on my site ASAP, please get back to me with ideas/suggestions.
Regards,
Denyerec
Denyerec.co.uk

I have had amazon stuff up on my site for the past two months — https://www.chait.net. Both in sidebars and inlined lookups in certain articles (as float items).
It is based off of the AmazonSearch.php library, and another sample. I’ve extended it at this point to take single or array ASINs for products, extended the lookup-cache system, allowed image-size as a parameter, parameter for the div to outer-wrap an item, divs and spans around the content to allow for css styling, parameter for whether to show a ‘buy at amazon’ button, etc., etc.
I’d have to see what dependencies I’ve embedded and remove them, and the associates-tag and developer-tokens would (optionally) want to change for others — I mean, if you want to use my associates tag, that’s cool! ??
An example of how simple it is to use this system is something like:

$ASIN_codes = array('B00008VFCU', // rca lyra
'B0000TNZEE', // archos a/v
'B0001A99MO', // Apple iPod mini
'B0000DFZ6F', // Creative Rhomba
);
echo get_amazon_product($ASIN_codes, 'cache_file', $imageSize);

I could probably make the associates-ID (and dev token) a global that you set prior to including the amazon.php module, and if it isn’t set I just fall back to mine. That’d be easy, and then people wouldn’t need to modify the files at all.
Is there enough interest here for me to put effort towards pulling this together, cleaning it up, etc? Do people have lists of features they are looking for? I’d also probably want to break out sample CSS for styling things…
Check out chait.net for the base examples, but I use the same functions, with some added CSS tricks, for the Reviews that have a right-float Amazon product pop..
-d

David,
That looks pretty nice, but I have a few ?’s:
1) Is there an easy option for including alt text for the images? I noticed all your amazon images have alt=”
2) Not sure why you’re coding your images as <img src=…></img> instead of <img src=… /> Just wondering…probably an easy fix.
3) I think I know the answer to this, but just want to confirm: can you pass the ASIN(s) as a parameter, or is it hard coded into the function?
This looks like something I would be interested for my upcoming Movies section. I’ve experimented with simply plugging the ASIN into the dynamic link code from Amazon’s “build a link” section. It works ok, but there’s no caching or anything. It fetches the info on every page view. Basically I just created a snippet of sorts and change the ASIN as needed for each product:
<iframe marginwidth=”0″ marginheight=”0″ width=”120″ height=”240″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ src=”https://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?o=1&l=as1&f=ifr&t=tcervocom-20&p=8&asins=B00005JKQZ&IS2=1&lt1=_blank”></iframe&gt;
Not as slick as yours, but it works ??
-Tony
I insert

David,
Ok, thanks. I think adding the product name/title as alt text would be helpful…for accessibility reasons. The title attribute is great for visual browsers, but alt is good for others.
I’d love to get a copy of this…
-Tony

Just to close this out, since there’s another thread in the Hacks section, I figured I’d post updates on my Amazon stuff there rather than here… ??
-d
https://www.chait.net