Consuming Amazon Web Services in ASP and ASP.NET
Developers can now integrate Amazon content into their websites. This is done by consuming Amazon Web Services using XML-based protocols. The first thing a developer needs to do is to download the SDK and obtain a Developers Key. Visit the Amazon website:
http://www.amazon.com/webservices
Once Amazon has sent the Key, developers can tap into the web service by using some VB Script in an ASP page:
<%
set xslt = createObject("MSXML2.XSLTemplate")
set xslDoc = createObject("MSXML2.FreeThreadedDOMDocument")
set xmlDoc = createObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
xmlDoc.async = False
xmlDoc.setProperty "ServerHTTPRequest", true
xmlDoc.load(AmazonXmlUrl)
xslDoc.async = False
xslDoc.Load Server.MapPath("amazon_product_list.xsl")
Set xslt.stylesheet = xslDoc
Set xslProc = xslt.createProcessor()
xslProc.input = xmlDoc
xslProc.Transform
function AmazonXmlUrl
SearchString="Dreamweaver MX" 'Enter keywords to search for
DeveloperKey="xxxxxxxx" 'You developer Key
AffiliateID="webservices-20" 'Your affiliateID or use the default
AmazonXmlUrl="http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml?v=1.0&t=" & AffiliateID &_
"&dev-t=" & DeveloperKey & "&KeywordSearch=" &_
SearchString & "&mode=books&type=lite&page=1&f=xml"
end function
response.write xslProc.output
%>
The XSL file called amazon_product_list.xsl is contained in the support files and can be downloaded by clicking the link below. The XSL file contains a basic template to show the content from Amazon. This can be amended to suit the look and feel of a website. Other variables are:
- SearchString - keywords that describe the books to be shown. Or the ISBN's of individual books in a | delimited string.
- DeveloperKey - the Key that the developer obtained from Amazon.
- AffiliateID - webservices-20 is a default. This can be substituted for the AffiliateID of the website.
C# in an ASPX page can also be used:
<%@ Page Language="C#" ContentType="text/html" ResponseEncoding="iso-8859-1" %>
<script runat="server">
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
try
{
System.Xml.XmlDocument d=new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
d.Load(new System.Xml.XmlTextReader(AmazonXmlUrl()));
rss.Document=d;
rss.TransformSource="amazon_product_list.xsl";
}
catch
{
//
}
}
private string AmazonXmlUrl()
{
string SearchString="Dreamweaver MX" ;
string DeveloperKey="xxxxxxxxxx" ;
string AffiliateID="webservices-20" ;
return "http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml?v=1.0&t=" + AffiliateID
+ "&dev-t=" + DeveloperKey + "&KeywordSearch="
+ SearchString + "&mode=books&type=lite&page=1&f=xml";
}
</script>
Download file
