Chapter 9: Interacting with the eBay API

Overview

eBay, being one of the few survivors of the dot-com crash, has become the world's largest online auction house, with thousands of items for sale in many categories from users around the world. The API eBay offers is by far the most complex discussed in this book, offering more than 100 different calls. Obviously, only a small fraction of these can be discussed here. Simply signing up and obtaining all the information required to make your first API call with eBay can be more difficult than some of the applications discussed in other chapters.

eBay offers both a REST and a SOAP interface for its API. The REST API is quite limited, offering only a basic search interface, with limited information included in the response. Meanwhile, the SOAP API is expansive, offering not only a huge variety of calls, but also a variety of detail levels associated with those calls, which can allow you to fine-tune the information returned to your specific needs.

This chapter walks you through interacting with the eBay API, showing you the following:

• How to register yourself as an eBay developer

• Using the REST API with eBay

• Getting started with eBay's SOAP API

• Searching eBay items with the SOAP API

• Adding auction items to eBay using the API