[REL] [EN] [BETA] Amazon[.com|.co.uk|.de|.ca|.fr|.co.jp]

THEMike · Post by **THEMike** » 2007-03-23 15:56:34

Hi,

I have just finished a beta release of a new Amazon script.

This script uses the Amazon Web Services interface instead of relying on parsing the public web site HTML. AS such, it won't be constantly broken by UI changes made by the Amazon development team.

Furthermore, the script supports configuration to allow you to use the amazon of your choice. There are several regional amazon sites that support the amazon web services API, and this script will work with any of them. These are:

Amazon.com - Global/US
Amazon.co.uk - UK
Amazon.de - Germany
Amazon.ca - Canada
Amazon.co.jp - Japan
Amazon.fr - France

Simply use the script options in the top right corner of the script dialogue to change the Amazon that will be used for your search.

Additionally, you can set an option to change the script to prompt you for a title to search on instead of the title of your movie, and configure which size image to import.

The script defaults to Medium Images, No Prompt and Amazon.com search engine.

It populates the title, rating, image and URL. I intend to expand this to support year and length at least. I may extend further to editorial and actors if I have time, but since I don't care about that data myself, this is unlikely.

The script is currently English language interface, however, I would appreciate submitted translations and I will then appropriately internationalise it.

The latest Beta version (0.1) can be found here:
http://fuckingbrit.com/backend/Amazonws.ifs

Please note, the script will move location at some point in the not to distant future when I re-organise my website slightly.

Cheers,

Mike

THEMike · Post by **THEMike** » 2007-03-23 18:01:28

Terribly sorry, appears when I uploaded it earlier I put it in a sub-folder. The link above now works correctly. I'm now fixing a load of my AMC entries using it to give it a pretty good amazon.co.uk thrashing.

Post by **antp** » 2007-03-23 18:56:59

Nice project, that's indeed a good choice to use that web service interface.
Shall I include your script with the others, or do you prefer that some people test it here on the forum before releasing that script?

THEMike · Post by **THEMike** » 2007-03-23 19:17:44

I'm already aware of a couple of issues that I need to work out, I shall let you know when I think it's a release quality item.

KoVaR · Post by **KoVaR** » 2008-01-02 15:50:46

so....
any updates

?

THEMike · Post by **THEMike** » 2008-01-02 18:51:04

The only two issues I am aware of with the above script are:

1) If there is no image in the returned data for a selected item, it crashes.
2) I use the URL thing to pass the item id around, which means you can't view page in a meaningful way.

For 1, I can't now find an item on Amazon that has this issue so it's impossible for me to re-create and fix at the moment.

With 2, I can't find a better way of identifying what the user selects from the list view.

Has anyone had any other problems? If not I'm happy for it to be released, unless someone can give me a DVD name and item topick that I can use to recreate (and fix) 1

slasher · Post by **slasher** » 2008-01-09 10:36:39

THEMike wrote:1) If there is no image in the returned data for a selected item, it crashes.

I don't know if I undestood correctly what you said... But, for instance, try searching on Amazon.com for "I'm not there". It hasn't have an image and the script crashes.

Hope that it helps.

Bye!

THEMike · Post by **THEMike** » 2008-01-10 19:41:04

Excellent!

Thanks for that, issue now fixed.

I've also resolved the other issue with a horrible nasty mean hack.

But it works.

So, unless anyone knows of any other faults, I'm happy for it to be released.

Cheers,

Mike

azer · Post by **azer** » 2008-01-11 22:15:24

Verry nice script

But I found a bug, try searching for "Logan's Run" without the qoutes and select choice number 2 or "Robo Vampire" and choice 2 or 3.
It seems like it's the problem with dvds without covers. But the script shuffles the order of the two first dvds around it seems. But the funny thing is there are two links not working with robo vampire in the script, but there are only on missing cover on the site.

THEMike · Post by **THEMike** » 2008-01-12 18:28:26

I can't recreate the problem with the latest version of the script. Try downloading from this url:

http://fuckingbrit.com/backend/Amazonws ... 0801121827

and testing those movies again.

azer · Post by **azer** » 2008-01-14 18:02:15

I was using the one from www.antp.be/temp/scripts/. This one works nicely.

joe935 · Post by **joe935** » 2008-01-15 18:40:07

I just tried your script with "I'm not there" and i found that allmovie.ifs script returned more information than amazonws.ifs

THEMike · Post by **THEMike** » 2008-01-16 08:31:26

It populates the title, rating, image and URL. I intend to expand this to support year and length at least. I may extend further to editorial and actors if I have time, but since I don't care about that data myself, this is unlikely.

Yeah, as I noted originally, I only do the title, rating, image and URL (actually, not sure I do rating). It could be expanded to do other fields, but I'm not interested in them so haven't spent the time to do so.

I'm sure the allmovie site/script provides more. But does it work with all versions of amazon via an unchanging web services API or is it scraping a single site?

joe935 · Post by **joe935** » 2008-01-16 11:15:17

Sorry, I thought you had improved it to include more info.

bad4u · Post by **bad4u** » 2008-02-09 23:57:04

Hi Mike.

Nice idea, nice work.
Using the API seems quite complicated, but you did really nice basics for an interesting solution.

Here's my contribution, the missing code for import of length and year, and in addition the director

Code: Select all

      // Director
      if oXmlElement.Items.GetItemNamed('ItemAttributes').Items.GetItemNamed('Director') <> nil then
        SetField(fieldDirector, oXmlElement.Items.GetItemNamed('ItemAttributes').Items.GetItemNamed('Director').Value);
      // Year
      if oXmlElement.Items.GetItemNamed('ItemAttributes').Items.GetItemNamed('ReleaseDate') <> nil then
        SetField(fieldYear, Copy(oXmlElement.Items.GetItemNamed('ItemAttributes').Items.GetItemNamed('ReleaseDate').Value, 0, 4));
      // Length
      if oXmlElement.Items.GetItemNamed('ItemAttributes').Items.GetItemNamed('RunningTime') <> nil then
        SetField(fieldLength, oXmlElement.Items.GetItemNamed('ItemAttributes').Items.GetItemNamed('RunningTime').Value);

There is still a small 'bug' - if there are more directors than one, only the last one from the list will be imported yet. No problems if a value is missing on website/API.