DBI Driver Abstraction for the
Amazon® E-Commerce Services API
Presicient™ is a member of the Amazon Associates program.
DBD::Amazon is a product of Presicient Corporation, and is not a product of, nor endorsed by, Amazon.com, Inc.
Synopsis
$dbh = DBI->connect('dbi:Amazon:', $amznid, undef,
{
amzn_locale => 'us',
amzn_max_pages => 3,
amzn_resp_group => 'Medium',
})
or die "Cannot connect: " . $DBI::errstr;
#
# search for some Perl DBI books
#
$sth = $dbh->prepare("
SELECT ASIN,
Title,
Publisher,
PublicationDate,
Authors,
SmallImageURL,
DetailPageURL,
SalesRank,
ListPriceAmt,
AverageRating
FROM Books
WHERE MATCHES ALL('Perl', 'DBI') AND
PublicationDate >= '2000-01-01'
ORDER BY SalesRank DESC,
ListPriceAmt ASC,
AverageRating DESC");
$sth->execute or die 'Cannot execute: ' . $sth->errstr;
print join(', ', @$row), "\n"
while $row = $sth->fetchrow_arrayref;
$dbh->disconnect;
Description
DBD::Amazon provides a DBI and SQL syntax abstraction for the Amazon(R) E-Commerce Services 4.0 API aka ECS. http://www.amazon.com/gp/. Using the REST interface, and a limited SQL dialect, it provides a DBI-friendly interface to ECS.
Be advised that this is ALPHA release software and subject to change at the whim of the author(s).
Download
DBD-Amazon-0.10.tar.gz
Prerequisites
Perl 5.8.0
DBI 1.42 minimum
SQL::Statement 1.10
SQL::Amazon 0.10 (included in this bundle)
Clone 0.15
Testing Considerations
To run the test package, you'll need
- An Amazon ECS User ID
- An environment variable DBD_AMZN_USER must be set to an Amazon ECS user ID in order to connect and execute ECS requests. Registration at the Amazon Web Services site is required to acquire a user ID.
- An Internet Connection
- Obviously.
- Patience
- Some of these tests download large amounts of Amazon catalog data, which can take some time (esp. since a minimum 1 second delay between requests is required).
Also, be prepared for possible intermittent 'Internal Error' reports; these are problems within the Amazon ECS system, not failures in DBD::Amazon itself.
Installation
For Unix:
gunzip/untar as usual, then
cd DBD-Amazon-0.10
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
Note that you probably need root or administrator permissions to install. Refer to ExtUtils::MakeMaker for details on installing in your own local directories.
For Windows:
Unzip with your favorite utility, e.g., WinZIP, then
cd DBD-Amazon-0.10
perl Makefile.PL
nmake
nmake test
nmake install
SQL Dialect
DBD::Amazon supports a subset of standard SQL, and additional predicate functions for keyword searches. Review SQL::Amazon::Parser and SQL::Statement for syntax details.
Use table_info() to retrieve the metadata for any of the defined tables/views.
Currently, only the following tables are defined:
- Books
- Offers
- CustomerReviews
- EditorialReviews
- BrowseNodes
- ListManiaLists
- Merchants
- SimilarProducts
- SysSchema
Driver-specific Attributes
- amzn_locale (Connection attribute)
- Sets the Amazon locale to use (i.e., the root ECS request URL). Valid values are 'us', 'uk', 'de', 'fr', 'jp', 'ca' (Currently, only us is supported). Default is 'us'.
- amzn_affiliate_id (Connection attribute)
- An Amazon affiliate ID. Default none.
- amzn_rate_limit (Connection attribute)
- Minimum number of seconds allowed between requests. Default 1. May be fractional.
- amzn_max_pages (Connection and statement attribute)
- Maximum number of pages to return for each request. Default 20.
- amzn_resp_group (Connection and statement attribute)
- ECS Response Group to use; can be any of 'Small', 'Medium', or 'Large'; default is 'Large'.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Jeff Zucker for his guidance/patience, and adding some nice new features to SQL::Statement to help make DBD::Amazon a reality.
For More Info
http://www.presicient.com/dbdamzn
Author and Copyright
Copyright (C) 2005 by Presicient Corporation, USA
Permission is granted to use this software according to the terms of the Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file, with the exception that commercial redistribution, either electronic or via physical media, as either a standalone package, or incorporated into a third party product, requires prior written approval of the author.
This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Presicient Corp. reserves the right to provide support for this software to individual sites under a separate (possibly fee-based) agreement.
See Also
For help on the use of DBI, see the DBI users mailing list:
mailto:dbi-users-subscribe@perl.org
For general information on DBI see
For information about the Amazon API, see
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/002-0796007-0473654?%5Fencoding=UTF8&node=3435361