I am providing scraping service on Upwork using the API key of Google maps to get businesses places data? Can google please reply that they allow so I can show proof to upwork so I can provide a proof?
I want to develop an application that will be able to dial in to corporate clients' Google Apps Domain to get user info and groups. Is there a sandbox available where I can do this? Otherwise it looks like I would have to provision a (say) 200 user account and this could be expensive. Or do corporate clients get a staging environment where I could test this work? Thanks.
There's no sandbox like this as far as I know. Partners and large customers will usually have test accounts for this type of work but I don't believe these are made available to the general public.
I'd recommend scaling down your tests to as few users as possible. Also, note that Groups do not cost anything to create. If you are going to have to do something like this yourself, make sure you select the flexplan to ensure you pay for only what you're actually using.
Another option would be to see about buying a Standard Google Apps account. Ensure all features you're working on are available for Standard accounts though. I don't know the market for them but I believe you can find accounts like this on Ebay for pretty cheap.
There is no sandbox, but
you can create a free 30-day-trial Account. (https://www.google.com/work/apps/business/).
if you have an existing Google Apps domain you can request a development domain via your reseller or Google Apps Partner.
I have been reviewing the setup of a current Amazon Web Store implementation to figure out some of the systems capabilities. The end goal is to pull a feed that i can reuse and transform for Channel Adviser. The documentation on Amazon Web Store is a little sparse and I'm wondering if anyone here has a little experience with this specific product scenario (pull inventory from Web Store Account).
The current goal is to pull down the inventory for the store in a feed via RSS or any other suitable format. I have been looking at the RSS web feeds for Tags # amazon.com page but I dont think it's available for the web store product or feasible to pull an entire store's inventory this way.
-my research has led me to the amazon product advertising API but looking at the WSDL for the service, the only relevant service calls I see are ItemSearch, ItemLookup and SimilarityLookup; none of these seem to explicitly support Web Store and they dont really seem entirely appropriate for pulling the Web Store's entire inventory (although they do appear to accept a merchant ID). Does anyone know of a common or appropriate way to get access to this data?
Thanks in advance for any specific guidance you can provide
After a couple of contacts with Amazon Seller support, it appears that the most appropriate solution is to set up an Amazon Marketplace Web Services account and use those apis. The 'Inventory' api seems to be exactly what we were after (although the support email suggested the Reports section).
Response from Amazon Seller Support
We checked and we have a different program that fits your needs called MWS (Market Place Web Service), you would have to sign up for an account first which is for free. Please visit this link to find out more information:
https://developer.amazonservices.com/
Click on reports and then on Amazon MWS Developer Guide (PDF) and you will be able to get more information related to your concern.
After using the ebay API recently, I was expecting it to be as simple to request info from Amazon, but it seems not...
There does not seem to be a good webpage which explains the basics. For starters, what is the service called? The old name has been dropped I think, and the acronym AWS used everywhere (but isn't that an umbrella term which includes their cloud computing and 20 other services too?).
There is a lack of clear information about the new 'signature' process. Gathering together snippets of detail from various pages I've stumbled upon, it seems that prior to August 2009 you just needed a developer account with Amazon to make requests and get XML back. Now you have to use some fancy encryption process to create an extra number in your querystring. Does this mean Amazon data is completely out of reach for the programmer who just wants a quick and simple solution?
There seems to be a tiny bit of information on RSS feeds, and you can get a feed of items that have been 'tagged' easily, but I can't tell if there is a way to search for titles using RSS too. Some websites seem to suggest this, but I think they are out of date now?
If anyone can give a short summary to the current state of play I'd be very grateful. All I want to do is go from a book title in my database, and use Classic ASP to get a set of products that match from Amazon, listing cover images and prices.
Amazon 'widgets' can display keyword search results on my pages, but I have less control over these, and they are shown to the user only - my code can't look inside them.
Your post contains several questions, so I'll try to answer them one at a time:
The API you're interested in is the Product Advertising API (PA). It allows you programmatic access to search and retrieve product information from Amazon's catalog. If you're having trouble finding information on the API, that's because the web service has undergone two name changes in recent history: it was also known as ECS and AAWS.
The signature process you're referring to is the same HMAC signature that all of the other AWS services use for authentication. All that's required to sign your requests to the Product Advertising API is a function to compute a SHA-1 hash and and AWS developer key. For more information, see the section of the developer documentation on signing requests.
As far as I know, there is no support for retrieving RSS feeds of products or tags through PA. If anyone has information suggesting otherwise, please correct me.
Either the REST or SOAP APIs should make your use case very straight forward. Amazon provides a fairly basic "getting started" guide available here. As well, you can view the complete API developer documentation here.
Although the documentation is a little hard to find (likely due to all the name changes), the PA API is very well documented and rather elegant. With a modicum of elbow grease and some previous experience in calling out to web services, you shouldn't have any trouble getting the information you need from the API.
I agree that Amazon appears to be intentionally obfuscating even how to find the API documentation, as well as use it. I'm just speculating though.
Renaming the services from "ECS" to "Product Advertising API" was probably also not the best move, it essentially invalidated all that Google mojo they had built up over time.
It took me quite a while to 'discover' this updated link for the Product Advertising API. I don't remember being able to easily discover it through the typical 'Developer' link on the Amazon webpage. This documentation appears to valid and what I've worked from recently.
The change to authentication procedures also seems to add further complexity, but I'm sure they have a reason for it.
I use SOAP via C# to communicate with Amazon Product API.
With the REST API you have to encrypt
the whole URL in a fairly specific
way. The params have to be sorted,
etc. There is just more to do. With
the SOAP API, you just encrypt the
operation+timestamp, and thats it.
Adam O'Neil's post here, How to get album, dvd, and blueray cover art from Amazon, walks through the SOAP with C# method. Its not the original sample I pulled down, and contrary to his comment, it was not an official Amazon sample I stumbled on, though the code looks identical. However, Adam does a good job at presenting all the necessary steps. I wish I could credit the original author.
I wrote a blog post on this subject, after spending hours wading through Amazon's obscure documentation. Maybe useful as another view on the process.
I found a good alternative for requesting amazon product information here: http://api-doc.axesso.de/
Its an free rest api which return alle relevant information related to the requested product.
Some links i found:
Forum thread for amazon tutorial request
Amazon Web Services
Some sort of script for using the amazon eCommerce API
another tutorial for amazon web-store-y stuff
Amazon and ebay e-commerce API tutorials
Straight from the horse's moutyh: Summary of Product Advertising API Operations which has the following categories:
Find Items
Find Out More About Specific Items
Shopping Cart
Customer Content
Seller Information
Other Operations
Since the time when the question was asked in 2009 the changes have, unsurprisingly, continued and some of the answers and links provided are now superseded or deadlinks.
As of February 2022, Amazon now provide the Product Advertising API Scratchpad for developers to try out API requests so they can get up and running in minutes:
Scratchpad is a tool to help Amazon Associates send basic requests to
the Product Advertising API. Follow the steps below and you can have a
working request with sample code in minutes.
The linked page also has onward links to pages where you may
sign up for the Associate program and Product Advertising API and access the complete API documentation.
As mentioned by #Reg Edit in his recent answer, Amazon now provides a scratchpad for their Product Advertising API, which in-fact does have a "SearchItems" endpoint which presumably returns products for a search query similar to the one a shopper would enter into Amazon's search bar while shopping.
Here's a link explaining on how to get access to Amazon's Product Advertising API. This would be helpful for anyone looking to display Amazon product's on their application programmatically.
In order to get access to Amazon's Product Advertising API, you must meet the following 3 requirements:
Have completed 3 sales in the last 180 days
Have an approved associates account
Comply with this agreement
Now if you don't meet the above requirements, the only other option Amazon gives you is to use their SiteStripe widget, which is a tool to help associates build links manually.
If you do not meet the requirements listed above and would still like to get Amazon product data for your app or website programmatically, you may use web scraping to achieve the same. Since the data is public, no one can legally stop you from scraping it. Depending on how experienced you are with programming, you could either build a scraper yourself or use a service that enables you to do so.
I have built one such service myself—it is called Amazon Product Search API and it allows users to grab search results from Amazon including product title, thumbnail, URL, etc. for any search query a user would make while shopping on Amazon. It supports all the major countries Amazon operates in.
Using this service does not require you to be an Amazon associate. Users may scrape up to 10k search results for free.
This question maybe a better fit on The Business of Software forum but despite my post on there, I'm still unable to determine the following: Can I use the Google API to build commercial software? If not how can the people behind Byline charge for their app?
Update: I'm specifically interested in Google's Picasa & Reader APIs
From the Google Terms of Service:
5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services by any means other than through the interface that is provided by Google, unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Google. You specifically agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services through any automated means (including use of scripts or web crawlers) and shall ensure that you comply with the instructions set out in any robots.txt file present on the Services.
(emphasis added)
More specifically, when you say "the Google API", which of the many APIs Google exposes are you referring to? Each of them has different terms of use. Some can be used commercially, some can't.
Update:
from the terms for the Picasa Button and Uploader APIs
7.1 Subject to the Terms, you may develop, display and/or distribute your Button using the Services as part of a commercial or non-commercial enterprise, and you may develop your Button for use in accessing paid content or services. You may not charge a separate fee for use of any Button, unless you have entered into a separate signed agreement with Google. If you wish to sell or transfer your Button, you must obtain Google’s prior written permission.
from the terms for the Picasa Web Albums Data API
5.8 You may use the Picasa Web Albums API as part of a commercial or non-commercial enterprise, subject to these Terms. You may not however charge a separate fee for use of the Picasa Web Albums API unless you have entered into a separate signed agreement with Google.
As far as the Google Reader API is concerned, it still appears to be unreleased and so no specific terms are available.
To enter into a signed agreement with Google, you're probably best off contacting your local Google office and talking to one of their business development representatives there... Alternatively, you could try contacting the Business Proposals department from their contact page...
If you are talking about the Google Web Toolkit:
http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/doc/1.6/FAQ_GettingStarted.html#Can_I_use_GWT_to_develop_commercial/enterprise_applications?
The answer is Yes.
Which API do you want to use?
I think that Google Maps API has some limitations.
You should read the term of use carefully and make sure that it fits what you want to do.
Update: The Picassa API can be used in a commercial app but you can not charge the user for a separate fee. see 5.8 at http://code.google.com/intl/fr/apis/picasaweb/terms.html