Comments on: Amazon API Changes, Bookdata, PHP (Sorry)

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:33:37 +0000

Thanks for the clarification, it helped alot.
I already figured out, that i have to replaces spaces with %20.

But if I’m using German Umlauts (ü,ö,ä), or for example French characters I always get the following response:

The request signature we calculated does not match the signature you provided. Check your AWS Secret Access Key and signing method. Consult the service documentation for details.

I tried to encode the stuff with rawurlencode (which works fine for spaces), but as it seems not for other characters.

Do you have any idea how to solve this?

Thank you very much

By: James Bridle

James Bridle — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:49:46 +0000

Whether it returns images depends on which response group you’re using:

http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSECommerceService/2009-10-01/DG/index.html?CHAP_ResponseGroupsList.html

You certainly need to ask for at least the Medium group if not the large one to get product images…

By: Sinki

Sinki — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:28:18 +0000

Can you tell me how to get the images ? Beacuse in the Xml i am not getting any node for images but previously with amazon api i have done.

By: Sinki

Sinki — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:24:27 +0000

Thanks buddy.

By: Helen Sam

Helen Sam — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:55:24 +0000

Thanks for your comment, James. My bad, I was entering my associate Id incorrectly. It’s now fixed :)

Great resource you have here.

By: James Bridle

James Bridle — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:04:32 +0000

Helen – what are you trying to do? The Associate ID is for linking to Amazon, not using the API – as far as I’m aware…

By: Helen Sam

Helen Sam — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:46:34 +0000

Thanks for this very useful tip. I was wondering why in the code should be insert our associate user id .e.g ‘bkseller-20′? The reason I ask is because everytime I insert it in the $request url, I get error message.

I just can’t work out where it should be insert then.
Thanks for your help

By: David

David — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:23:37 +0000

I tried your code. It works. Thanks so much. Without your code I’m sure I never would’ve gotten my API requests to work. I’m just confused at how and why it works. Amazon (poorly) explains this at: http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonFPS/latest/FPSAdvancedGuide/index.html?APPNDX%5FGeneratingaSignature.html
It says “The endpoint is not included.”, so I’m totally baffled at this line in your code: $string_to_sign = “GET\necs.amazonaws.co.uk\n/onca/xml\n”.$string_to_sign;
I don’t understand hash_hmac either, but nevermind that. I just wondered if you can explain why you appended that strangely modified endpoint.

By: James Bridle

James Bridle — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:34:43 +0000

Hi Rod – glad it helped, and thanks, yes – the book title needs to be made safe…

By: Rod Page

Rod Page — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 06:02:19 +0000

Many thanks for this as I’d been pulling my hair out trying to get Amazon’s web service to work. Note that the book title needs to have any spaces replaced by %20.