REST and SOAP
About REST
REST (Representational State Transfer) allows you to make calls to ECS by passing parameter keys and values in a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). ECS returns its response in XML (Extensible Markup Language) format.
REST request example:
http://ecs.amazonaws.com/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService &AWSAccessKeyId=[your Access Key ID here] &Operation=ItemSearch &SearchIndex=Books &ResponseGroup=Small &Keywords=xml
REST response example (extracted):
...
- <Items>
+ <Request>
<IsValid>True</IsValid>
- <ItemSearchRequest>
<Keywords>xml</Keywords>
<ResponseGroup>Small</ResponseGroup>
<SearchIndex>Books</SearchIndex>
</ItemSearchRequest>
</Request>
<TotalResults>1545</TotalResults>
<TotalPages>155</TotalPages>
- <Item>
<ASIN>0321430840</ASIN>
<DetailPageURL>http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html%3FASIN=...
</DetailPageURL>
- <ItemAttributes>
<Author>Elizabeth Castro</Author>
<Manufacturer>Peachpit Press</Manufacturer>
<ProductGroup>Book</ProductGroup>
<Title>HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition (Visual Quickstart Guide)</Title>
</ItemAttributes>
</Item>
...
</Items>
...
About SOAP
SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) allows you to use Amazon E-Commerce Service (ECS) by making remote procedure calls. This information is encoded using XML.
SOAP request example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
-<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
- <SOAP-ENV:Body>
-<m:ItemSearch xmlns:m="http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2005-03-23">
- <m:Request>
<m:Keywords>xml</m:Keywords>
<m:SearchIndex>Books</m:SearchIndex>
<m:SubscriptionId>0525E2PQ81DD7ZTWTK82</m:SubscriptionId>
<m:ResponseGroup>Small</m:ResponseGroup>
</m:Request>
</m:ItemSearch>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
SOAP response example (extracted):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> ... - <SOAP-ENV:Body> -<ItemSearchResponse xmlns="http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2005-03-23"> + <OperationRequest> - <Items> + <Request> <TotalResults>1545</TotalResults> <TotalPages>155</TotalPages> - <Item> <ASIN>0321430840</ASIN> <DetailPageURL>http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html%3FASIN= ... </DetailPageURL> - <ItemAttributes> <Author>Elizabeth Castro</Author> <Manufacturer>Peachpit Press</Manufacturer> <ProductGroup>Book</ProductGroup> <Title>HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition (Visual Quickstart Guide)</Title> </ItemAttributes> </Item> ...
