Required Itemsearch Parameters - Amazon Product Advertising API Developer's Manual

Product Advertising API Developer Guide

Required ItemSearch Parameters

ItemSearch can potentially return any item sold by a merchant and most sellers. Because there are so
many items, ItemSearch requires that you specify a search index and at least one additional parameter,
as shown in the following example.
http://webservices.amazon.com/onca/xml?
Service=AWSECommerceService&
AWSAccessKeyId=[AWS Access Key
Operation=ItemSearch&
SearchIndex=Books&Keywords=Saving%20Miss&20Oliver's
&Timestamp=[YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ]
&Signature=[Request Signature]
In this request, ItemSearch looks for "Saving Miss Oliver's" in the titles and descriptions of all of the
items in the Books search index. The response would include all matches.
The previous example used the Keywords parameter as the second parameter, which is one of the most
popular parameters to use. The following list shows all of the ItemSearch parameters that you could
have used instead.
• Actor
• Artist
• AudienceRating
• Author
• Brand
• BrowseNode
A cursory look at the list of parameters shows you that most are very specific, which makes it easy to
determine whether or not they should be used in a request. The Publisher parameter, for example, is
used only to specify the publisher of a book. Once you know the item you are looking for, choosing which
parameter to use becomes easy.
Parameter Support by Search Index
Each search index supports only a subset of all ItemSearch parameters. For example, in the US locale,
when you specify the Blended search index, you can only use one parameter: Keywords, in a request.
Using any of the other parameters in that request would return an error.
All other search indices support multiple parameters. For example, when you specify the Beauty search
index, in the US locale, you can include one or more of the following parameters in the request.
• Brand
• BrowseNode
• Condition
The search index—parameter combinations, for the most part, make sense. For example, if you use the
Automotive search index, the Author parameter is invalid in the request. This restriction makes intuitive
Items Sold by Merchants
ID]&
• Composer
• Conductor
• Director
• Keywords
• Manufacturer
• MusicLabel
• ItemPage
• Keywords
• Manufacturer
• MaximumPrice
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• Orchestra
• Power
• Publisher
• Title
• MinimumPrice
• Sort
• Title