How to Extract Product Information via Amazon's MWS API

How to Extract Product Information via Amazon’s MWS API

Amazon’s Marketplace Web Service (MWS) API is a powerful tool that enables online sellers and developers to automate and enhance their business processes. One of its key features is the ability to extract product information. In this article, we will guide you through the process of how to get product information via Amazon’s MWS API.

Step 1: Register for Amazon MWS

Before you can use the Amazon MWS API, you’ll need to register your application with Amazon. Go to the Amazon MWS registration page, fill in the required details, and accept the Amazon MWS License Agreement. Once completed, you’ll be provided with your AWS Access Key ID and Secret Access Key.

Step 2: Set Up Your Environment

The Amazon MWS API is accessible via HTTP. You can use whatever language you’re comfortable with, but for this tutorial, we’ll use Python and the requests library. Install it with:

pip install requests

Step 3: Construct Your Request

To request product information, you’ll need to use the GetMatchingProduct operation. Here’s a basic example of how to construct this request:

import requests
import hmac
import hashlib
import base64
import time

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID = 'your-access-key'
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = 'your-secret-key'
MARKETPLACE_ID = 'your-marketplace-id'
SellerId = 'your-seller-id'
ASIN = 'product-asin'

base_url = 'https://mws.amazonservices.com/Products/2011-10-01'
method = 'POST'
path = '/Products/2011-10-01'
timestamp = time.strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ', time.gmtime())

parameters = {
    'AWSAccessKeyId': AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID,
    'Action': 'GetMatchingProduct',
    'SellerId': SellerId,
    'MWSAuthToken': 'AMZN.mws.your-auth-token',
    'MarketplaceId': MARKETPLACE_ID,
    'ASINList.ASIN.1': ASIN,
    'SignatureMethod': 'HmacSHA256',
    'SignatureVersion': '2',
    'Timestamp': timestamp,
    'Version': '2011-10-01',
}

def calculate_signature(secret_access_key, method, host, path, parameters):
    sorted_params = sorted(parameters.items(), key=lambda x: x[0])
    canonical_query_string = '&'.join(['%s=%s' % (k, v) for (k, v) in sorted_params])
    string_to_sign = '\n'.join([method, host, path, canonical_query_string])
    h = hmac.new(bytes(secret_access_key, 'utf-8'), digestmod=hashlib.sha256)
    h.update(string_to_sign.encode('utf-8'))
    return base64.b64encode(h.digest()).decode()

parameters['Signature'] = calculate_signature(AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, method, base_url, path, parameters)

response = requests.post(base_url, params=parameters)

This script sends a POST request to the GetMatchingProduct operation. It includes the necessary parameters and calculates the signature required for authentication.

Step 4: Parse the Response

The response from Amazon MWS will be in XML format. You can parse it using any XML parsing library. Here’s how you can do it using Python’s built-in xml.etree.ElementTree:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

root = ET.fromstring(response.content)
namespace = {'a': 'http://mws.amazonservices.com/schema/Products/2011-10-01/default.xsd'}

for product in root.findall('.//a:Product', namespace):
    title = product.find('.//a:Title', namespace).text
    brand = product.find('.//a:Brand', namespace).text
    print('Title:', title, 'Brand:', brand)

This script extracts the title and brand for each product in the response.

By following these steps, you can retrieve product information via Amazon’s MWS API. Remember to handle and store your credentials securely and to respect Amazon’s usage policies. Happy coding!

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