Amazon module (or plugin)?

I think that because it is such a basic feature, and one that I would guess appeals mainly to personal or semi-personal sites, its one that would strengthen EE’s capabilities in the ‘basic blog’ area. And while EE is great for bigger projects, I think that its usefulness for smaller sites sometimes suffers when compared to other blog applications that have a lot of people developing free tools that would be of interest to those types of sites.

[…] smaller sites sometimes suffers when compared to other blog applications that have a lot of people developing free tools that would be of interest to those types of sites.

yes! I’m still using one of the Amazon Plugins but have realized that I’m getting some annoying “Notice: Only variables should be assigned by reference” errors. I’m not good enough to figure out how to fix those on my own. Aside from those errors, the plugin still seems to be working fine.

I’d hate to have to switch to something else for that blog just to get rid of a few errors… Any chance someone know what I might want to look for?

I find it odd that this community hasn’t figured out a (shareable) working solution for the amazon thing - like PXLated said [quote author=”PXLated”]this has been a basic thing on so many blogs for so long that it should just be part of EE (wether official or not!)

ok. I’m an idiot. 😊 though the errors are there - I can make them dissappear easily enough by switching off the debug settings.

If you check the knowledge-base for that error, there’s a solution; though it’ll involve hacking your plugin.

Suppressing is not usually a good way to get rid of errors; it just hides them, not fixes. =)

Thanks lisa! I’ll go check.

I don’t mind hacking the plugin! 😊 that I can do if I’m told how to do it, I just can’t figure it out myself…

and, I know it doesn’t get rid of the error. but with my skill on the subject - out of sight, out of mind (or even, if I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist!) Thanks for the help! 😊

I believe it is March 1st that Amazon’s old system stops working, which means the main plugin that’s been used will stop working too. I’ve tried to figure out how to update the plugin to the new system myself, but its way over my head. Has anyone done it for themselves?

I ended up dropping the plugin altogether and replaced it a bunch of custom fields and a tad more work during entry creation. It’s not elegant, but it works and isn’t reliant on a plug-in.

That sounds like a lot more work during entry creation, depending on what you’re pulling in. And aren’t you stuck uploading the images for yourself, then?

I’ve also got it implemented in such a way that its pretty much impossible for me to do it like that, I think. I have it and the link-list making a booklist with images together, for example.

Yep, I have to upload the images myself. It’s really not that much more work. I use a total of four extra custom fields (Amazon, Authors, Price, and Release Date) of which only two (Amazon and Price) are required and those two are cut and pastes of the code from Amazon’s Link Building widget. It takes all of an extra 30 seconds or so of work, but on the plus side it isn’t likely to fail due to the plug-in becoming obsolete.

Its the image upload part that I find really awkward. I used to do it that way, and it made it so much slower, so its not really an option for me.

Hi,

I have just created a module that allows you to fetch items from Amazon using their Associate Web Service.

I needed one for my site so I built one, maybe you will find it useful also. It’s PHP5 only at the moment I’m afraid, but it will work with either “allow_url_fopen” switched on in the php.ini file or by having Curl installed.

Some features are:

• Control panel to set default Associate Id, Associate tag, and Locale.
• Listing of errors in control panel to show any problems with setup or item related data.
• Choice of using Medium or Small ‘Response groups’ which can mean less data is fetched from Amazon for efficiency.

Example usage:

Here is a simple example fetching the title of a book.

{exp:cjm_amazon:item asin="1857231384"}
    {Title}
{/exp:cjm_amazon:item}

In this example we want to display the product image as well so we need the Medium response group which contains the image URL details.

{exp:cjm_amazon:item asin="1857231384" response_group="Medium"}
    {Title}
    {SmallImageURL}
{/exp:cjm_amazon:item}

If this book was only available in the UK then I’d also add the Locale.

{exp:cjm_amazon:item asin="1857231384" response_group="Medium" locale=".co.uk"}
    {Title}
    {SmallImageURL}
{/exp:cjm_amazon:item}

Download it here : CJM_Amazon