Adam.Kahtava.com / AdamDotCom

If you've ever landed on Amazon.com then you're probably familiar with their reviews and wish lists. Amazon provides access to these items (and many-many more) through their extensive web services - the Amazon web services can be complex and overwhelming when all you want is a review list and a single user specific wish list. For this site I wanted to pull in my reviews and wish list - displaying them alongside my blog. It's fair to note, that user reviews are available via an RSS feed (but this feed doesn't include all the details I wanted) and the wish list page still doesn't provide an RSS feed. So a custom Amazon web service request was in order.

Let me try to make this story short.

If you want to request your reviews and your wish list you need the following:

• An Amazon Account: http://www.amazon.com/gp/css/homepage.html with at least a wish list or a review.
• An Amazon Associates tag: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/ (this will be your AssociatesTag).
• An Amazon Web Service (AWS) access key: http://aws.amazon.com/ (this will be your AWSAccessKey).

Once you have a wish list or review, you then need to:

• Get your CustomerId for the reviews. I found my CustomerId by navigating to my reviews (http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2JM0EQJELFL69/) then pulling out 'A2JM0EQJELFL69' (the last element of the url).
• Get your ListId for your wish list.  I found my ListId by navigating to my wishlist (http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/registry.html/?id=3JU6ASKNUS7B8) then pulling out '3JU6ASKNUS7B8' (the identifier after id= from the url).

Once you've collected all those bits, you need to:

• Checkout and download the source code for the project and build the assembly or download the pre-compiled assembly.
• Add the assembly reference to your project (remember, I'm assuming you're using .NET).
• Make a call to the application which will generate XML files containing your respective reviews and wish list.

Setting up the call would look something like this:

IAmazonRequest amazonRequest = new AmazonRequest() {
     AssociateTag = “adamkahtavaap-20″,
     AWSAccessKeyId = “1MRF________MR2″,
     CustomerId = “A2JM0EQJELFL69″,
     ListId = “3JU6ASKNUS7B8″
};

IFileParameters fileParameters = new FileParameters() {
     ProductFileNameAndPath = @”Products.xml”,
     ReviewFileNameAndPath = @”Reviews.xml”,
     ErrorFileNameAndPath = @”Errors.xml”  
};

IAmazonApplication amazonApplication = new AmazonApplication(amazonRequest, fileParameters);

amazonApplication.Save();

   And Viola!

• At this point you can do anything with your XML files (Products.xml, Reviews.xml, Errors.xml). I've consumed mine through an ASP.NET Repeater and displayed the contents within a web page (see it live here, view the code here).

If you'd like to provide some design guidance, fix a bug, or request a feature, then visit (or join) the project on Google Code.

Alternatively, you might also be interested in the LINQ To Amazon source featured in the book LINQ in Action.

Happy coding!

While developing a component for Amazon’s E-Commerce Service (ECS) Web Services Description Language (WSDL) (Version 4.0), I encountered a couple minor issues and found the following links of use:

Issues:

Version 4.0 of the ECS WSDL is not compatible with Microsoft’s Visual Studio (VS) 2003. However, the ECS WSDL works fine in VS 2005, a workaround for VS 2003 and other known issues can be found on the Amazon.com Associates: XML Developers Discussion Board. 

Useful links:

• Philip Miseldine’s tutorial titled: Use Amazon Web Services in ASP.NET
• The Amazon E-Commerce Service (ECS) Software Development Kit (SDK)
• Known Issues: Amazon.com Associates: XML Developers

This website pulls my reviews, and my recommended reading list off of Amazon.
The originating Amazon data can be viewed here: my Amazon reviews, my Amazon wish list.

In my search for a resume DTD (I’ve been working on a personal portfolio site) I came across The XML Resume Library.

Initially the idea of an XML based resume seemed really neat (geeky neat) - with an XML resume you have a single master copy that easily transforms into: HTML, PDF, RTF, or plain text. However, after closer inspection I decided an XML based resume was impractical for my needs.

My reasoning:
I don’t have a single resume but a number of different resumes (a generic, a specific, a master etc…).
A word processor is easier to use, has spell check, and is better suited for a resume than an XML editor.
If I ever want to edit or append to my resume in a hurry (in a coffee shop or an internet cafe) I am more likely to find a word processing application than an XML editor.
Very few jobs are secured solely through the internet, the time spent maintaining my XML resume could be better spent meeting, greeting and networking - due to the passive nature of the internet, something like 3% of people actually find work online.
An XML based resume would be more of a novelty than an integral part of my portfolio site.

An XML based resume could prove useful for a HR department, employment agency, or community / social software, but for my personal resume it would be an impracticle novelty.

View my resume here.