Required ItemSearch Parameters

ItemSearch can potentially return any item sold by a merchant and most sellers. Because there are so many items, ItemSearch requires that you specify a search index and at least one additional parameter, as shown in the following example.

http://webservices.amazon.com/onca/xml?
Service=AWSECommerceService&
AWSAccessKeyId=[AWS Access Key ID]&
Operation=ItemSearch&
SearchIndex=Books&Keywords=Saving%20Miss&20Oliver's
&Timestamp=[YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ]
&Signature=[Request Signature]

In this request, ItemSearch looks for "Saving Miss Oliver's" in the titles and descriptions of all of the items in the Books search index. The response would include all matches.

The previous example used the Keywords parameter as the second parameter, which is one of the most popular parameters to use. The following list shows all of the ItemSearch parameters that you could have used instead.

A cursory look at the list of parameters shows you that most are very specific, which makes it easy to determine whether or not they should be used in a request. The Publisher parameter, for example, is used only to specify the publisher of a book. Once you know the item you are looking for, choosing which parameter to use becomes easy.