Bagging It - PHP

In this concluding article, find out how to add search features to your AWS-backed online store, and link your product pages up to Amazon.com's shopping carts and wish lists.

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By: icarus, (c) Melonfire

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November 13, 2002

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SEARCH DEV SHED

TOOLS YOU CAN USE

Finally, after providing you with the API to build a product catalog, search for products, and obtain detailed product descriptions, AWS rounds things out by allowing you an entry point into Amazon's transaction system, providing constructs to add products to an Amazon.com shopping cart or wish list.

For the first time in a while, accomplishing this doesn't involve using any special SOAP commands - all you need is a plain ol' HTML form, containing certain mandatory fields.

<form method="POST"
action="http://www.amazon.com/o/dt/assoc/handle-buy-box=<ASIN>">
<input 
type="hidden" name="asin. <ASIN>" value="1">
<input type="hidden" name="tag-value" 
value="<YOUR-ASSOCIATES-ID>">
<input type="hidden" name="tag_value" value="<YOUR-ASSOCIATES-ID>">
<input 
type="hidden" name="dev-tag-value" value="<YOUR-TOKEN>"> <input
type="submit" 
name="submit.add-to-cart" value="Buy From Amazon.com"> or 
<input type="submit" 
name="submit.add-to-registry.wishlist" value="Add
to Amazon.com Wish List"> 
</form>

So, if you wanted to place a "Buy!" link on each product page for the book "XML and PHP" - Amazon.com ASIN 0735712271 - your form would look like this:

<form method="POST"
action="http://www.amazon.com/o/dt/assoc/handle-buy-box=0735712271">
<input 
type="hidden" name="asin.0735712271" value="1">
<input type="hidden" name="tag-value" 
value="melonfire-20"> <input
type="hidden" name="tag_value" value="melonfire-20"> 
<input
type="hidden" name="dev-tag-value" value="YOUR-TOKEN-HERE"> <input
type="submit" 
name="submit.add-to-cart" value="Buy From Amazon.com"> or 
<input type="submit" 
name="submit.add-to-registry.wishlist" value="Add
to Amazon.com Wish List"> 
</form>

Needless to say, it's pretty easy to incorporate this into the product information page designed in the previous example - here's the script:

<?php
// include class
include("nusoap.php");
// create a instance of the 
SOAP client object
$soapclient = new
soapclient("http://soap.amazon.com/schemas2/AmazonWebServices.wsdl",
true);
// 
create a proxy so that WSDL methods can be accessed directly
$proxy = $soapclient->getProxy();
// 
format ASIN to ten-character format
$asin = sprintf("%010d", $_GET['asin']);
// 
set up an array containing input parameters to be
// passed to the remote procedure
$params 
= array(
'asin'        => $asin,
'mode'        => 'books',
'tag' 
=> 'melonfire-20',
'type'        => 'heavy',
'devtag'     
=> 'YOUR-TOKEN-HERE'
);
// get item details
$result = $proxy->ASINSearchRequest($params);
$items 
= $result['Details'];
// get list of similar items
$simResult = $proxy->SimilaritySearchRequest($params);
$simItems 
= $simResult['Details'];
// display the result
?>
<html>
<head>
<basefont 
face="Verdana">
</head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<p>&nbsp;<p>
<table 
width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5">
<tr>
<td bgcolor="Navy"><font 
color="white" size="-1"><b>Welcome to
The Mystery Bookstore!</b></font></td>
<td 
bgcolor="Navy" align="right"><font color="white"
size="-1"><b><? echo 
date("d M Y", mktime());?></b></font></td> </tr>
</table>
<p>
<table 
width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td
align="center" 
valign="top" rowspan="8"><a href="<? echo
$items[0]['Url']; ?>"><img 
border="0" src=<? echo
$items[0]['ImageUrlMedium']; ?>></a></td> <td><font 
size="-1"><b><? echo
$items[0]['ProductName']; ?></b></font></td> 
</tr> <tr> <td align="left"
valign="top"><font size="-1">List Price: 
<? echo $items[0]['ListPrice'];
?></font></td> </tr> <tr> <td 
align="left" valign="top"><font
size="-1">Amazon.com Price: <? echo $items[0]['OurPrice'];
?></font></td> 
</tr> <tr> <td align="left" valign="top"><font
size="-1">Publisher: 
<? echo $items[0]['Manufacturer']; ?></font></td>
</tr> <tr> <td 
align="left" valign="top"><font size="-1">Availability:
<? echo $items[0]['Availability']; 
?></font></td> </tr> <tr> <td
align="left" valign="top"><font 
size="-1">Amazon.com sales rank: <? echo
$items[0]['SalesRank']; ?></font></td> 
</tr> <tr> <td align="left"
valign="top"><font size="-1">Average customer 
rating: <? echo
$items[0]['Reviews']['AvgCustomerRating']; ?></font></td> 
</tr> <tr> <td
align="left" valign="top"><font size="-1"> <form 
method="POST"
action="http://www.amazon.com/o/dt/assoc/handle-buy-box=<? echo 
$asin;
?>"> <input type="hidden" name="asin.<? echo $asin; ?>" value="1">
<input 
type="hidden" name="tag-value" value="melonfire-20"> <input
type="hidden" name="tag_value" 
value="melonfire-20"> <input
type="hidden" name="dev-tag-value" value="YOUR-TOKEN-HERE"> 
<input
type="submit" name="submit.add-to-cart" value="Buy From Amazon.com"> 
or 
<input type="submit" name="submit.add-to-registry.wishlist" value="Add
to 
Amazon.com Wish List"> 
</form></font> 
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td 
colspan="2">
<font size="-1">
<hr>
<?
foreach($items[0]['Reviews']['CustomerReviews'] 
as $r)
{
?>
<b><? echo $r['Summary']; ?></b>
<br>
<? echo $r['Comment']; 
?>
<hr>
<?
}
?>
</font>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">
<font 
size="-1">
Customers who shopped for this item also bought:
<ul>
<?
foreach($simItems 
as $s)
{
echo "<li><a href="" . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . "?asin=" .
$s['Asin'] 
. "">" . $s['ProductName'] . "</a>"; }
?>
</ul></font>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

And here's an example of the page generated:

Clicking either of the form buttons will redirect the user to Amazon.com, where the selected item gets added to a shopping cart/wish list. Consummating the transaction is currently outside the scope of AWS, and is handled by the main Amazon.com site; if you're an Amazon.com Associate, your account will get credited with appropriate commission, since the URL passed to Amazon.com includes your Associate ID. It all fits together pretty neatly.

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