Getting more from Amazon..?

  • Alex

    (@bald_technologist)


    20 years, 10 months ago

    Howdy, I’m a long time MT user, who, like many, is adopting WP. So far I am exceedingly happy. Hell, I’d say I am downright ecstatic. A solid tool, built on PHP instead of Perl. Life is good.
    So, as I am converting my site to WP I have begun tinkering with the two Amazon plugins (Media Manger and CG) either of which would be a solid addition to my site. But, I want to do more than either of them currently support. So, I thought I would post a question to see if anyone else has hacked the plugins to add any of the following functionality, or perhaps if the developers would like to post of any development plans that would include some of the functionality.
    What I would like to see:

    • A way to track the status of an item. For my purposes, this is most applicable to books, but it may well work for other items. For example, I would like the ability to note that a book is currently unread, is being read or has already been read. And I want the ability to sort by these phases, and perhaps only display items that match one of them.
    • The ability to import my Amazon Wishlist. A while back I put together a basic script that retrieves my Amazon wishlist (via XML/XSLT) to display on my site which I could continue to use, but it would be really nice if I could have WP import and store it. This would be even better if it could be synchronized against the one posted on Amazon. Perhaps via cron.

    Well, that sums it up, at least for now. I would appreciate any feedback!
    Alex

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)

  • I’m pretty sure the Wishlist capabilities are there under the covers of CGA. I’d be willing to work on making it into a user-defineable variable and a specific function/tag. It would then be synchronized on the same cycle as the rest of CGA stuff. No need for cron, although I do have a way (somewhere…) to force an update of the system. Right now it does sort of a lazy update.
    As for unread/read/etc., CGA has the wpCategory field for you to enter your own categorization. Unless you’ve already used if for some other classification. I could add a second category field, just starts making queries a bit more complex. ??
    -d
    CHAITGEAR

    Meant to post here. Ugh.
    0.93 should be up tonight or tomorrow, keep an eye out. Wishlists were simply another searchtype I didn’t have covered, and I’ve added a new specific function to show wishlists and other such special lookups.
    -d

    New version 0.93 is up, new Wishlist function (and config var) referenced in the readme.
    CG-Amazon Download
    -d

    Thread Starter Alex

    (@bald_technologist)

    That’s great David! Thanks for the speedy response and great plugin. ?? It is truly appreciated.
    Alex

    I’m having a problem :
    I get the following error when creating the table, as described in step 6 of the readme :
    Fatal error: Cannot redeclare findstr() (previously declared in <mysite>/wp/helper_fns.php:116) in <mysite>/wp/cg-plugins/helper_fns.php on line 116
    Also, step 5 mentions ” Then upload the new CGA files to your server.”
    What files are you referring to? Didn’t we already upload all files in step 1?

    First, I work in an offline environment, where I set up all my files locally then upload them to the server. Most people do that. So I generally write in terms of organizing files, configuring them on the local machine, then upload them for use on your live server.
    Second, that particular error I believe is referenced on the download page. If you use other CG plugins with CG-Amazon, there are new versions of them all and everything must be placed in the cg-plugins directory that CGA comes with. In some future version(s), I’ll start encapsulating CG-Referer and CG-Feedread underneat a cg-plugins folder as well so this gets less confusing.
    Basically, the CG stuff is ALL meant to be run from cg-plugins, though only CGA makes that a ‘requirement’ — but if you run CGA alongside other CG stuff, the other two need to be added to CGA’s cg-plugins folder as they share a bunch of common php files.
    That make sense? Remove the CG files from your base WP directory, and move them instead into the cg-plugins directory — though make sure you are using the latest versions (i.e., don’t overwrite CGA versions of files… use those).
    -d

    Makes sense…I’ll give that a go. Thanks!

    No problem! Feel free to post here or in the main CGA thread if you have further questions.
    -d

    Status’ is a doozy, wishlists, not quite as straightforward and as I don’t use them myself, it’s not something I considered.
    I’m making a list of things myself and others have suggested for AMM2, though I want to keep is as simple as possible, so if super-twinkle-status-reporting and the zenith of customisation is your heart’s desire, you may well be found wanting ??
    I’m a simple person, afterall ??

    david, I actually got it working after I “uninstalled” cg-feedread, which I never really got to work (and don’t really need anyway).
    It looks really nice and I’m impressed. I saw the example code for the wishlist pulls in 3 random items, but a refresh of the page gave the same 3 results. Is there an expiration time set in which it pulls 3 different items? Or is it per session?
    Also, the wishlist output takes a long time to load, which doesn’t make it attractive to put it on top. Any chance of that being improved in the future?
    Thnx..great work.

    Just uploaded 0.933. Fixes caching of the wishlist data, which was the long load time.
    I just tried it on my internal site here, and got random stuff. Just F5ing the page over and over.
    Try the new version, see if that works better.
    CG-Amazon Download
    -d

    w8in – btw, if you grab the a new copy of feedread and copy it INTO the cg-plugins directory, all should work just fine. I like it because it tells me visitor counts, referrers, and searches. But I need that as I’m running a blog-thats-not-a-blog site. ??
    And let me know if the new version is missing anything else.
    -d

    The wishlist retrieval doesn’t seem a lot faster, but I’ve incorporated it in my blog anyway.
    I may try the feedread again tonight.

    Huh? The wishlist should retrieve once every 24h based on the default timing. Check your cache_amazon directory on the webserver, and make sure that a WishlistXXXXXXX.bin (the X’s would be your wishlist ID) file has been created. If not, that’s the problem. If the cache file isn’t there, it does a lookup every time — and you DON’T want that! ??
    Once cached, the display should be pretty-darn-quick. The only thing that would ‘delay’ the pageload is the actual images from amazon, and you could prove that out by setting image to false.
    Definitely make sure you’re using .934, as it solves both image size (and disable) stuff, and has the .933 changes to solve the wishlist caching problem.
    -d

    The cache in .934 appears to be working fine. Deleted the cached wishlist and got an updated one with the new items on my wishlist. Images appear to be working now also (or rather not displaying when set to ‘false’).

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)
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