My New Bookstore
Magic Amazon Beans v0.2
I added an Amazon book store to Magic Bean Dip today. It’s still rudimentary, but it works. I wrote my own software and used the new ECS 4.0 data interface supplied by Amazon, with PHP and the Pear libraries to process the data.
This is my abbreviated to do list:
- Retry failed Amazon requests
- Actually do something when I detect an error
- Cache data and pages, especially for filling in incomplete replies from Amazon
- Add detail pages for individual books
- Link back to the main Magic Bean Dip page
- Add a search box
- Improve HTML design
- Make Money!
I’ve spent 3 weeks working on the script so far. My main issue was how to extract the data from the XML replies provided by Amazon. After a failed attempt with XSLT, I bounced around between PHP and Perl, looking for a usable way to extract the data. I finally settled on XML_Serializer from the Pear libraries.
It may be wishful thinking, but Magic Amazon Beans seems like a natural title for my new creation. The name conjures images of rows of little beans marching into my bank account. Gotta love that picture.