CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#amazon-product-api
Tom
Tom

Reputation:

'SearchIndex="All"' not working in Amazon Product API

I am using SearchIndex="All" in the Amazon Product API and getting no results. When I specify the category, I do get results.

Does anyone know if there are any restrictions on this search index or ?

Thanks

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2664

Answers (4)

Matty
Matty

Reputation: 883

This is an old question, but working with the Product Advertising API today, I have found nothing but dead ends and frustration trying to find answers. Hoping this will help a lot of folks that get pass the signing and need to start searching.

A lot of the c# examples that are listed out there use the following:

ItemSearchRequest request = new ItemSearchRequest();
request.SearchIndex = "Books";
request.Title = "WCF";
request.ResponseGroup = new string[] { "Small" };

The problem is the that the example is using "Title" to search on and I am not getting any results with this either. Use "Keywords" and you will see results come back with the SearchIndex set to "All"

ItemSearchRequest request = new ItemSearchRequest();
request.SearchIndex = "All";
request.Keywords = "WCF";
request.ResponseGroup = new string[] { "Small" };

This should resolve your issue.

Upvotes: 1

B Seven
B Seven

Reputation: 45943

There are certain limitations due to the large number of items listed at Amazon. So, what they do is force you to use a "SearchIndex". It's not a very good name, but it means the department similar to those listed on the Amazon homepage. These departments include Books, Electronics, etc.

Here is excerpt from page 103 of the API Dev Guide version 2010-11-01. Be sure to use the same version of the Dev Guide as your API call because the functionality changes between versions. You can download the Dev Guide:
http://www.onlineinvestingai.com/publicFiles/Amazon-Product-Advertising-API-Dev-Guide-2010-11-01.pdf .

I uploaded it to the above link because it is nearly impossible to find on the Amazon Dev site.

Searching Across Indices

ItemSearch requests require that you specify a search index. This is because searching across the millions of products in Amazon databases would take too long. Product Advertising API does, however, enable you to search across multiple search indices using the All or Blended search indices.

All Search Index

You can use the All search index to do an ItemSearch search through all search indices. There are, however, a number of restrictions placed on this request: the only parameter that you can use in the request is Keywords, and you cannot, for example, sort results.

Note: You cannot use the All search index in an ItemLookup request.

The Amazon Product Advertising API is actually fairly easy to use. The hard part is finding the documentation on the Amazon site.

Hope that helps. The document is long and difficult to understand at first, but after you try different searches and see the results it works.

Here are two more documents (for the same version of the API) that may be helpful:
Getting Started Guide:
http://www.onlineinvestingai.com/publicFiles/Amazon-Product-Advertising-API-Getting-Started-Guide-2010-11-01.pdf

Quick Reference Card:
http://www.onlineinvestingai.com/publicFiles/Amazon-Product-Advertising-API-Quick-Reference-Card-2010-11-01.pdf

Upvotes: 3

abushawki
abushawki

Reputation: 11

look my friend all you need to do in searching (All) is using just keyword don't assign any other parameters in the request and you will have results but only 50 result because amazon will inforce you to identify category .

Upvotes: 1

user256430
user256430

Reputation: 3633

Since there's no code snippet to look at, I may be off-base here, but make sure you are using Operation=ItemSearch in your request.

If you have the Developer's Guide PDF downloaded, there's a lot of great information starting on page 253 which includes restrictions and necessary inclusions and examples.

Cheers

Upvotes: 3

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