AWS News Blog

Updated ECS Release

We updated the ECS 3 and ECS 4 services earlier this week. The new WSDL version is 2005-03-23. Here are the release notes:

New Features

  • New SearchIndices

    ECS announces support for new search indices – Toys in DE and Pet Supplies in US. Please refer to the API Reference section of the documentation for Search Index, Sort values and SearchIndex / Parameter combinations.

  • ListSearch and ListLookup support for Wedding Registry (US only)

    ListSearch and ListLookup operations now support Wedding Registry.

  • Purchases for Wishlist and Wedding Registry owners (US only)

    Customers can now purchase items from Wishlists/Wedding Registry for Wishlist owners. DetailPageURL users dont need to do anything different to benefit from this feature. Remote Shopping Cart users need to pass in the ListItemId in their CartCreate/CartAdd requests. (Note : Due to a known issue in the US locale the MergeCart value will always evaluate True regardless of how it is set.)

  • New Elements

    A new element IsEligibleForSuperSaverShipping is now available for Amazons offer indicating whether an item is eligible for Super Saver Shipping. A new element Edition is now available for the Books SearchIndex indicating the edition of the item. A new element SubTotal is now available in Cart operations at the Cart, CartItems and SavedForLaterItems levels. The SubTotal elements at CartItems and SavedForLaterItems level is the subtotal of all items in the corresponding element i.e. CartItems and SavedForLaterItems. The SubTotal element at the Cart level is total of the SubTotals at the CartItems and SavedForLaterItems levels. (Please refer to the WSDL/schema for the location and datatype of these elements)

  • Changes to <Length>, <Height>, <Weight> and <Width> elements

    The <Length>, <Height>, <Weight> and <Width> elements are now available within <ItemDimensions> and <PackageDimensions> elements.

  • SellerNickname now available in Cart operations

    Cart operations now return the SellerNickname.

  • Changes to element data-types in the schema

    The following element data-types have been modified from NonNegativeIntegerWithUnits to DecimalWithUnits to accurately represent the data returned by ECS.

    AmazonMaximumAge, AmazonMinimumAge, CaseDiameter, CaseThickness, ContinuousShootingSpeed, CPUSpeed, DelayBetweenShots, DigitalZoom, DisplaySize, GraphicsMemorySize, ManufacturerMaximumAge, ManufacturerMinimumAge, MaximumAperture, MaximumResolution, MaximumShutterSpeed, MinimumShutterSpeed, MaximumWeightRecommendation, MonitorSize, MonitorViewableDiagonalSize, OpticalZoom, StoneWeight, SystemBusSpeed, TotalMetalWeight, WaterResistanceDepth

Resolved Issues

  • TotalReviewPages element is now supported in Reviews response group

    TotalReviewPages element is now returned within the CustomerReviews element for all locales

  • SellerLookup operation in intl locales does not return Feedback data

    The SellerLookup operation now supports Seller/SellerFeedback, Seller/AverageFeedbackRating, Seller/TotalFeedback, Seller/TotalFeedbackPages for intl locales.

  • More than 3 offers per condition returned when Condition=All

    As per spec, ECS now returns only 3 offers per condition for ItemLookup when Condition=All. Hence the maximum returned (for US) is 12 (3 per Condition for New, Used, Refurbished Collectible).

  • Boolean data-types are returned as Y/N

    Boolean data-types are now returned as 1/0.

  • Missing enum elements from AudienceRating in WSDL

    All documented AudienceRating enum values are now supported in the WSDL.

  • ListName missing in ListLookup for ListmaniaLists

    This has been fixed.

  • Incorrect Date format in CustomerContentLookup

    The Date element is now correctly formatted as yyyy-mm-dd.

  • ItemSearch for SearchIndex=Miscellaneous did not support searching by BrowseNode

    This has been fixed.

Known Issues

  • Customer Reviews not in-sync with the website

    Customer Reviews returned by search operations may not be in-sync with the website reviews.

  • Documentation needs information on the About field

    The About element will only be returned for merchants. The About element will be returned   for Marketplace Sellers in the future.     

  • ReleaseDate not returned for some items

    The ReleaseDate element is usually only returned for books, music, VHS, and DVD items. Few other products have a release date in the Amazon catalog.             

  • Parent ASINs are not clearly labeled as such

    Parent ASINs (items that have variations) are not clearly labeled as such. Currently, you must request the VariationSummary response group to determine whether or not an item is a parent ASIN.             

  • “ZShops” search index is currently “zShops”

    The “ZShops” search index is currently implemented as “zShops” (lowercase “z”). It will be changed to the capitalized form in a later release. This behavior applies to the SellerListingSearch operation.             

  • Values of SellerListing response group are not localized

    Some values of the SellerListing reponse group are not localized for the JP locale.             

  • ListLookup response for WishList missing elements for UK, DE

    In the UK (Amazon.co.uk), DE (Amazon.de, JP (Amazon.co.jp), FR (Amazon.fr) and CA (Amazon.ca) locales, a WishList lookup is missing the DateCreated and CustomerName elements. Also, for each Item node in the WishList, the ListitemId, DateAdded, QuantityDesired, QuantityReceived, Seller, and OfferAttributes elements do not appear. Under the OfferListing node, the OfferListingId and ExchangeId elements are missing.

  • CE ASINs with variations are not returning a list of valid merchants

    CE ASINs with variations are not returning a list of valid merchants using ItemLookup.             

  • ISPU items are not accessible via AWS Cart methods

    When inserting the ISPU items into the remote cart via OfferListingId, the cart rejects the item with the ‘not accessible’ error.

  • Quoted phrase searching is not working in ItemSearch with Keywords

    Quoted phrases in the Keywords field for ItemSearch are not accepted as a whole phrase.   Instead, they are broken up into individual terms and results are returned for subsets of   the phrase. For example, the parameter Keywords=”the last time” should only return results for   “the last time”, rather than “the”, “last” or “time”.             

  • CartCreate and CartAdd Help content does not specify required Items params

    The Help operation and missing_parameter error for CartCreate and CartAdd are not very useful. They say that “Items” is required; however, they don’t specify the sub-parameters of Items that   must be present. This makes it difficult to determine what Items parameters are required by calling   the API.             

  • Browse does not return a full list of nodes

    The list of nodes returned by BrowseNode for some ASINs is sometimes less than   the retail page.             

  • SimilarityLookup for two ASINs that returns no results does not return an error

    The SimilarityLookup operation does not return a NoSimilarities error when no intersecting   similarities are found for multiple products that do have similarities.   The NoSimilarities error is correctly returned either when the SimilarityLookup request   is for one ASIN that has no similarities or when the SimilarityRequest is for two ASINs,   only one of which has similarities.             

  • Default input content encoding may not be UTF-8

    The default input content encoding for ECS 4.0 is ISO-8859-1. The default content   input encoding should be UTF-8.             

  • Sample stylesheet out of date

    A few aspects of the supplied sample stylesheet are incorrect: 1) The service name has changed from AWSProductData to AWSECommerceService. 2) The namespace used in the sample style sheet no longer exists. The current namespace is versioned 2004-08- 01, instead of 2004-03-19

  • ItemSearch using TextStream may not work for all search indexes

    All SearchIndex values are not available to ItemSearch on TextStream, which includes stores like Tools, Software, and Jewelry.

Jeff Barr

Jeff Barr

Jeff Barr is Chief Evangelist for AWS. He started this blog in 2004 and has been writing posts just about non-stop ever since.