How to get Amazon prices from API? - api

I would like to build an app that shows me the price history of products and notifies me when the price reaches a certain limit.
I know that some of these things already exist, but I'm also interested in learning how to build them and trying out some technologies.
This is my question:
how do I get access to the Amazon Product API without having a website?

Right now, there are two Amazon APIs:
The older one is called Amazon MWS. You find its documentation here.
The newer one is called SP-API (abbreviation for Selling Partner API). This is their main page.
The access to both is only possible after registering as a professional seller (sic!), which costs a monthly fee (about USD 40). After registering as a seller, you then have to additionally register as a developer within your seller account.
If you do not want to pay monthly fees or register, you could also try webscraping their website. Here I do not now, what their policy is.

Related

Pointers for eBay Seller APIs?

I have a mobile app that allows people to upload information of clothes they have and share it with their friends. I have good traction - increasingly more users every day.
I want to create a new feature that allows users to sell unwanted items on eBay. Ideally, they'll click a button and the item will be available for sale on eBay.
I went through the developer APIs and I'm not even sure where to start. I can't tell whether I should try Retail-Standard Selling (New Sell APIs) or Traditional eBay Selling (Trading APIs) or even something else. Please could someone point me in the right direction?
Since we're speaking of unique items I would suggest to use "old" trading API AddFixedPriceItem
that's made for garage-sale and can do everything with just one call. (1)
while new Sell APIs are meant for stores selling new items in multiple quantities
and requires several calls to achieve the same result (create depo, images, listing, offer...)
BUT
despite what eBay writes (that will continue to support Trading APIs)
we see that every month some Trading APIs are decommissioned or deprecated:
for example last January they removed GetCategorySpecifics
and for next April there will be others..
Clearly you could mix the APIs, using the best combination of both
but since you're at beginning and since the 2 API family are completely different, I suggest you to use new Sell APIs
(1) Just to create the Listing, then several other are required to find proper category, itemsSpecifics, creating the profiles.... and so on..

Shopify billing api charges for sellers

New here and i hope i am in the right place to ask my question. We are having problem with submitting our app to Shopify App Store.
We have an app where people can create their own designs on our physical products and sell. So we can produce their products and dropship to their customers. There are many apps to that.
Problem is they forcing us to use Billing API for our product charges. They take 20% of commission which our margin is not that much. We are wholesaler and we our margin is super low. We use (well we were planing to use) Stripe for products charges, which is 2.9 % commission.
And Shopify Apps Team member is keep asking me my margin, and says: "We are requiring that all apps use the billing API, but I might be able to make an exception since it seems like your business model isn't compatible. If an exception is made, you will be required to sign a revenue share agreement based on your margins"
All other App (in our business line)they charge their customers with 3th party payment processors and i have spoken with some of them they say they never heard about it and they don't share any revenue (apart from membership fees) with Shopify.
Any idea about this?
Thank you so much for you help.
Shopify is charging 20% of the cost of the app not 20% of the cost of your finished products. I don't know if your app can be free and still in the app store but from what you have written free would work since you will actually make your money on the goods. Just bill normally for the orders you receive

Querying UPS API to find out how much they charged me for a shipment: Is it possible?

I'm working on an application that integrates with several of UPS's APIs, but there's one piece of information I can't figure out how to retrieve: how much UPS charged us to ship a package.
This information is available through the UPS web app, and I can't see in principle why it shouldn't be available programmatically. Is it?
NB: I know that you can send UPS information about the shipment and get back an estimated shipping cost, but that's not what I'm after. What I would like to retrieve is that actual shipping cost for a shipped package, specifically the "Public Charge", "Incentives", and "Net Amount" values listed on UPS invoices.
I don't believe you can actually get to the billing/invoice data from the standard ups developer kit. You can get the shipment charges, etc, at confirmation time through the shipment accept API, but it doesn't sound like that is what you are looking for. To get to billing data you have to enroll in a separate program for CSV/XML/EDI access.

Marketplace payment processor

I'm building a marketplace application:
The customer pays the seller on the marketplace
The marketplace takes a cut of the payment
I would have a payment processing system with the following features
The cut and the 100%-cut are sent directly to the marketplace and seller accounts (ie, I don't want to have 100% on the marketplace account and then to forward the 100%-cut to the seller)
I would love to have a UI as much integrated with the marketplace website as possible. This implies that the customer in the worst case has to put only name, surname and credit card number on the payment processor interface (the ideal would be a payment interface totally integrated with our website)
I don't want to force the customer to register to any third party service
It should work nicely with Ruby on Rails
It should work for non US-based companies and should support multicurrency payments
What are the options out there?
Thanks.
I'd recommend you look at our product Balanced. It's built to solve exactly this problem so I think it's a good match.
At a high level payments in are done via credit card like a normal payment processor, funds are deposited into an escrow account which is a sum of all funds collected - all funds disbursed. When you're ready to push funds out you can currently pay out via next-day ACH (US only) but we're building out international support which sounds like it would be useful for you.
I believe it matches your other requirements:
there is no requirement to send users offsite, they do require accounts but you can create and edit them via the API.
Balanced has an excellent ruby gem
You can split up the payment, taking a cut from the proceeds as profit
Balanced provides you with a merchant dashboard for you and your customers to get a head start but you can build the exact same thing via API access.
One area where it's not going to meet your requirements is multi-currency charges. Currently you'll need to charge in USD and convert.
Check out https://github.com/drhenner/ror_ecommerce It doesn't have all the features you want but will give you a big head start.
Basically active merchant will connect to most gateways. You need to add the custom code. Look at the video for more help http://ror-e.com/info/videos/1

what are the must have functionalities for a web shop (shopping cart)

what are the must have functionalities for an e-commerce web shop?
e.g.
unlimited categories and sub categories
multiple categories per product
multiple product images
product consumer ratings and comments
payment gateway integration
delivery service integration
Best Sellers
Newest Products List
discount facilities
promotional facilities (buy one get one free)
I know we shouldn't just link to elsewhere, but this link is within stackoverflow. I'll just quote it all here:
Do you need to build one at all? Most of this has been done for you in
various shopping cart packages
including google checkout,
oscommerce, and others, but if
you must take the plunge try to at
least think about the following...
Secure session for users
Storing 'items' in the cart via the session / cookies
Payment processing
what external systems do you interface with
what kinds of payments do you accept
what currencies do you accept
Some kind of dispatching system for when a purchase occurs
If a purchase occurs, who is notified to mail out the items?
where is the purchase logged?
Interaction with an inventory system of some sort
is the item in stock?
what to do when out of stock?
Total / shipping calculations
how much do you charge shipping for different customers/destinations
where do you want to ship / where will you not ship
A shopping cart is far more complex a
concept than it appears to be. The
specific answer to these questions
will depend on what kind of
organization you are working for. Big
company? Small startup? Family
business? High volume vs low volume?
Etc.