Anyone using any good alternatives to the Ruby/Amazon library? Seem a
couple projects out there, but nothing as extensive. Just heard that ECS
3.0 (which Ruby/Amazon uses) will be switched off soon.
Thanks
Chris
Dear Chris:
Could you provide more details on the Ruby/Amazon
solution. (Tolimit SPAM, please send to my email
address- [email protected]).
Thanks
Bindu
— Chris T [email protected] wrote:
Don’t pick lemons.
See all the new 2007 cars at Yahoo! Autos.
http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html
On Feb 7, 2007, at 1:58 PM, Bindu Rao wrote:
Could you provide more details on the Ruby/Amazon
solution. (Tolimit SPAM, please send to my email
address- [email protected]).Thanks
Bindu
I had rolled my own interface to Amazon Web Services and layered
Alexa on top. I’d put an Amazon E-Commerce Service on top, too, but
this post made me go looking.
I found the amazon-ecs gem on rubyforge and the author’s blog post
about it.
http://rubyforge.org/projects/amazon-ecs/
http://www.pluitsolutions.com/2006/12/07/ruby-amazon-e-commerce-rest-
services-api-amazon-ecs/
Superficially, it looks like Herryanto S. and I are heading in
similar directions, but he uses hpricot and I used REXML. (My stuff
isn’t released (yet?))
-Rob
Rob B. wrote:
Thanks
Bindu
http://www.pluitsolutions.com/2006/12/07/ruby-amazon-e-commerce-rest-
[email protected]
That was the one that looked like the most likely candidate to me too.
Was also considering rolling my own, though didn’t want to reinvent the
wheel if someone’s already done the job better. Can I just ask, are you
caching the result, and if so, in the db or the file sysem?
On Feb 7, 2007, at 6:53 PM, Chris T wrote:
soon.
http://www.pluitsolutions.com/2006/12/07/ruby-amazon-e-commerce-rest-
That was the one that looked like the most likely candidate to me too.
Was also considering rolling my own, though didn’t want to reinvent
the
wheel if someone’s already done the job better. Can I just ask, are
you
caching the result, and if so, in the db or the file sysem?
For the ECS, I’m planning to keep a refreshed_at time in the database
and make a new call to Amazon if the data needed is too old. I’m
going to wait and see if there needs to be a background task that
periodically refreshes data to avoid a request that finds many out-of-
date records given the 1/sec/IP limit on webservice requests.
-Rob
Ryan W. wrote:
To be fair, ECS3 will be around for another 14 months, so it’s not
quite “soon” that it’s going away.
Doh! That’s what happens when you speed read emails late at night. Just
saw the March 31 and didn’t take in the 2008. This relieves the pressure
somewhat, and gives us some time to plan out what we should do. To be
honest, I always assumed we’d have to replace Ruby/Amazon in the medium
term, and there are a few things I’m not wild about with it – and also
seems a bit difficult to refactor. On the other hand, it’s working and
we’ve got a few more urgent priorities at the moment, like getting the
app out of the door!
Thanks for sharing where you’re up to.
Cheers
Chris
On 2/7/07, Chris T [email protected] wrote:
Anyone using any good alternatives to the Ruby/Amazon library? Seem a
couple projects out there, but nothing as extensive. Just heard that ECS
3.0 (which Ruby/Amazon uses) will be switched off soon.
I have hacked up Ruby/Amazon to support a (very) few of the ECS calls
(the app I use it for is only concerned with looking up used book
prices and third-party sellers). I offered (and sent) the code to Ian
(the author of Ruby/Amazon), after asking him about it a couple of
times, but I never heard back from him on it. At the time, I think he
was ambivalent about porting to ECS4, as it wasn’t clear if there
might be an ECS5 lurking around the corner. Amazon has said that
there are no plans for an ECS5 in the work, and that ECS4 is the
version to move to for a while.
To be fair, ECS3 will be around for another 14 months, so it’s not
quite “soon” that it’s going away. 
If it would help, I’d be glad to send what I have, ugly as it is, to
you. I’d love to see someone take it and run with it, but I don’t
have enough expertise with all the (probably more common) ECS4 usages
to port those cases. I only had to change 2 files to do what I
needed, and I have a little sample script for usage.
I tried to leave the Amazon/Ruby usage pretty much the same as it was
(as much as I could), though under the hood, the way you form ECS4
calls is pretty different from ECS3, and what comes back is…well,
nasty. It looks like XML, but real XML people probably have to have
oxygen nearby when they look at it.
Anyway, I haven’t found a lot of other people interested in this, so
if it would help you guys, I could send it to you. Maybe it would get
you started. I’d love to see someone move Amazon/Ruby to ECS4, even
if it isn’t ultimately Ian that does it, though that would be cool,
too.