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Ruby/Amazon is a Ruby language library that allows programmatic access to
the popular Amazon Web site via the REST (XML over HTTP) based Amazon Web
Services. In addition to the original amazon.com site, the amazon.co.uk,
amazon.de, amazon.fr, amazon.ca and amazon.co.jp properties are also
supported.
Although the library is still in development, it already provides support
for the vast majority of the AWS v3.1 API. For example, all forms of
product search are implemented, along with the transaction details API and
the remote shopping-cart API.
Ruby/Amazon also offers advanced features not directly available via the
AWS API, such as the ability to retrieve all results pages for a particular
search, rather than having to deal with AWS responses of 10 results per
page. Ruby/Amazon will even use parallel threads to improve the performance
of such multi-page searches.
Another advanced feature is the ability to cache responses returned by AWS.
If the cache is used (as it is by default), the results of each unique
query will be cached and used for 24 hours. The cache can be manually
flushed of all or just the expired entries.
One other useful advanced feature is the ability to determine the
appropriate Amazon locale for a client, based on its IP address or
hostname. This allows you to direct AWS operations to be performed within
the correct geographical Amazon site for the given client. German clients
can be made to operate within amazon.de, British clients sent to
amazon.co.uk, etc.
More features are planned for future versions, such as Amazon Web Services
for Sellers. See the TODO file included with the software.
The easiest way to get started is to click on the Amazon class and to
follow the examples.
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