A while back, I linked some tips on how to display your Amazon Wishlist using javascript. Well, I guess I couldn’t leave well enough alone. Here’s a quick rundown on how to display an Amazon Wishlist in XML.
First and foremost, 99.2% of the credit for this “breakthrough” goes to Adam. I had asked his advise on how to make this work and he said (rather matter of factly, I might add), why not make a request to Amazon Web Services REST interface? OK. Sounds like a plan.
To display an Amazon Wishlist via XML, you can simply call the wishlist directly via an http request. Here’s the format:
http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3?t=affiliate number here&dev-t=devloper id here&WishlistSearch=wishlist id here&type=display preference&page=1&f=xml
Simple enough, right? For the short bus learners (like me), let’s break that down using English:
Create a url that calls to Amazon’s REST services interface and contains your affiliate id (or mine, heck, I don’t mind!), developer id (or mine, I guess), wishlist id number, and then decide if you want all the juicy details (heavy) or just the basics (lite) to be displayed.
So, the resulting url (using my affiliate id, developer id, wishlist id, and preference) would look like this:
Now, as best I can determine, most of the amazon xml feeds will not validate. If that matters to you, well, sorry. Nothing I can do there. But, they will (generally) parse and are useable. So, if you’ve got a pretty liberal newsreader, you can now create wishlists feeds for your entire family and always keep up with what they want!
For more info and reference, check the Amazon Web Services page.
That sounds geeky and fun. I might play with it later. I don’t feel like signing up for a developer number or whatever it is right now, though. I was just trying to display the daily Dilbert on my portal page when I saw the RSS feed on that Top 100 RSS feeds to which you linked. I failed miserably. I need to do something that doesn’t make my brain hurt for a while. :b