If you search on amazon for, say, "Don Quixote Spanish/English" you will find a number of matches or near-matches at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Don%20Quixote%20Spanish%2FEnglish
You can then select any of them, and the URL will contain a designator (ASIN) for the product. For example, if you select a particular item in the result set, its URL might be:
The key piece of data here is the ASIN ("B00JQRGICM"); if you google using that alone, it will find many places where that product is referenced on the Internet.
My question is, does amazon provide an API whereby you can pass a search phrase (such as "Don Quixote Spanish/English") that will return to you an array of ASINs and other relevant data ("B00JQRGICM" and others)?
For example, I would like to call it something like this:
api/Books?SearchStr=Don Quixote Spanish/English
...and get back json such as:
{
Title: "Don Quixote in Spanish and English: Complete (Vol I & Vol II)"
Price: 16.15
ASIN: "B00JQRGICM"
Image: "http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519dhx-MSOL._SL160_.jpg"
}
. . .
If there is such an API, has anybody here got experience in using it/sample code?
Yes. You can search Amazon and get an XML response with the ASINs using the ListMatchingProducts operation of the MWS Products API.
Here's the documentation with a sample request & response:
http://docs.developer.amazonservices.com/en_US/products/Products_ListMatchingProducts.html
An easy way to test this is using the MWS Scratchpad: https://mws.amazonservices.com/scratchpad/index.html