These release notes describe changes in the latest version of Amazon's E-Commerce Service (ECS), and provide a summary of known issues and last-minute information that could not be included in the documentation.
See the Documentation page on the Amazon web site for previous release notes.
The number of customer reviews returned is now unlimited
The number of customer reviews was limited to 20 pages. Now, there is no limit to the number of customer reviews returned.
The number of Listmania product pages returned is now unlimited
The number of product pages returned by Listmania was limited to 30. Now, there is no limit.
ItemLookup was not returning images.
ItemLookup was not returning images for Variations in Apparel items. Images are now returned when you include Variations as a Response Group.
ListLookup offers were not returned.
When ListLookup was called with OfferFull as its Response Group, or when MerchantId=All was removed from the URL, offers were not returned. This behavior is expected because the OfferFull Response Group does not include ItemLevel information.
Some prices for japanese items included decimal points.
Some prices for japanese items included decimal points, which are not used in their currency notation. Now, japanese prices that include decimal points are rounded up into integers.
In the japanese locale, Editorial Reviews displayed spurious characters.
In the japanese locale, Editorial Reviews displayed spurious characters because HTML stripping removed more characters than necessary. The spurious characters no longer appear.
Only the first page of customer reviews were returned.
Only the first page of customer reviews were returned when IdType=UPC. Now, all review pages are returned regardless of the IdType value.
In the japanese locale, MinimumPrice sometimes returned incorrect values.
In the japanese locale, MinimumPrice sometimes returned incorrect values. MinimumPrice was changed so that correct minimum prices are always returned.
ItemLookup created a pseudo offer.
Even when an Amazon offer did not exist, ItemLookup created a pseudo offer, which was only partially complete. Now, ItemLookup only returns an Amazon offer when there is one.
Some developer applications are submitting improperly coded HMACs.
Some developer applications are submitting improperly coded HMACs, which cause cart-related failures. Now, the following error message is returned to notify the developer of the problem: “Your request contains an invalid HMAC. Please verify the HMAC has been URL-encoded properly and retry. Remember to use the URLEncodedHMAC element in all Cart operations that must pass in an HMAC. The URLEncodedHMAC element is returned with the CartCreate operation.”
The error message associated with cart operations and the ListItemId parameter was not clear.
The error message associated with cart operations and the ListItemId parameter was not clear. The error message has been clarified.
AudienceRating did not support multiple values.
In the code, AudienceRating did not support multiple values whereas the schema did. AudienceRating now supports a maximum of 11 values, which include all of the possible movie ratings used in all locales.
ECS could not return a list of sizes for items that vary only by size.
ECS could not return a list of sizes for items that vary only by size. ECS now offers a Size attribute for items in the Sports SearchIndex. This attribute can be used to distinguish between two variations.
ItemSearch returned items from different merchants
Even when MerchantId was set, ItemSearch returned items from different merchants. ItemSearch now returns products sold only by the merchant specified in the request.
Units are not returned with requests for images.
Units are not returned with requests for images even though the schema suggests they should. AWS now returns units with images.
SellerLookup for merchants returned multiple Seller nodes.
SellerLookup for merchants returned multiple Seller nodes. SellerLookup for merchants now returns only a single Seller node
The error message associated with InvalidResponseGroup was incorrect.
The error message associated with InvalidResponseGroup was incorrect. It has been corrected.
Amazon's offer price did not display.
Amazon's offer price does not display when MerchantId=All. Now, Amazon’s offer price displays unless there is no Amazon offer.
The number of pages returned from a search request decreases as you scroll.
The number of pages returned from a search request decreases as you scroll through the pages. Amazon pages group similar items, such as the same shirt that comes in different colors. For performance reasons, the grouping of similar items does not occur until the page is viewed. For this reason, the number of pages in a reply can decrease when the pages are viewed.
ItemSearch returns items from wrong merchants.
Even when MerchantId is set, ItemSearch returns items from wrong merchants.
Relevancy score values are inaccurate
Search service relevancy score values are inaccurate.
Search service returns the incorrect search index.
The Search service returns the incorrect search index for a given ASIN.
No validation is done on ListItemId.
No validation is done whether the ListItemId corresponds to the ASIN or not.
MerchantId does not always filter search results
When using the MerchantId parameter with the ItemSearch operation, ECS may return products not sold by that particular merchant.
SellerLookup does not return Seller Name or correct Location
Results from the SellerLookup operation may not return the SellerName element or return the correct Location values.
ItemLookup does not return some editorial reviews
In a few cases, the ItemLookup operation does not return all of the available editorial reviews.
Feature elements are missing from ItemAttributes
ECS 4.0 does not return the Feature element in ItemAttributes that is returned by ECS 3.0l
The salesrank value varies greatly with the web site
The salesrank value returned by ECS is sometimes drastically different from the web site.
Relevance rank and search indexes are incorrect for Blended search index
The relevance rank and product search index is not correct in ItemSearch results when searching with the Blended search index.
Items returned using the PCHardware search index may not be hardware
Using the PCHardware search index with the ItemSearch operation returns non-hardware items. The Amazon.com web site also returns non-hardware items.
ItemSearch using Power does not return results as expected for exact dates
The results from the ItemSearch operation may not be correct when using exact dates with the Power parameter. Using date ranges returns expected results.
Author element missing in ECS 4.0
The Author element is not returned by ECS 4.0, although is is returned by ECS 3.0.
No Multiple IDs for SellerListingLookup in SOAP
The schema definition for Id in SellerListingLookup is incorrectly defined as a string since SellerListingLookup supports multiple Id's. This issue will only affect SOAP users.
WishList ID works when ListType=WeddingRegistry
The ListLookup operation returns results when ListType=WeddingRegistry and the ListId is a wish list ID.
Customer Reviews not in-sync with the website
Customer Reviews returned by search operations may not be in-sync with the website reviews.
ReleaseDate not returned for some items
The ReleaseDate element is usually only returned for books, music, VHS, and DVD items. Few other products have a release date in the Amazon catalog.
Parent ASINs are not clearly labeled as such
Parent ASINs (items that have variations) are not clearly labeled as such. Currently, you must request the VariationSummary response group to determine whether or not an item is a parent ASIN.
"ZShops" search index is currently "zShops"
The "ZShops" search index is currently implemented as "zShops" (lowercase "z"). It will be changed to the capitalized form in a later release. This behavior applies to the SellerListingSearch operation.
ListLookup response for WishList missing elements for UK, DE
In the UK (Amazon.co.uk), DE (Amazon.de, JP (Amazon.co.jp), FR (Amazon.fr) and CA (Amazon.ca) locales, a WishList lookup is missing the DateCreated and CustomerName elements. Also, for each Item node in the WishList, the ListitemId, DateAdded, QuantityDesired, QuantityReceived, Seller, and OfferAttributes elements do not appear. Under the OfferListing node, the OfferListingId and ExchangeId elements are missing.
CE ASINs with variations are not returning a list of valid merchants
CE ASINs with variations are not returning a list of valid merchants using ItemLookup.
ISPU items are not accessible via AWS Cart methods
When inserting the ISPU items into the remote cart via OfferListingId, the cart rejects the item with the 'not accessible' error.
Quoted phrase searching is not working in ItemSearch with Keywords
Quoted phrases in the Keywords field for ItemSearch are not accepted as a whole phrase. Instead, they are broken up into individual terms and results are returned for subsets of the phrase. For example, the parameter Keywords="the last time" should only return results for "the last time", rather than "the", "last" or "time".
SimilarityLookup for two ASINs that returns no results does not return an error
The SimilarityLookup operation does not return a NoSimilarities error when no intersecting similarities are found for multiple products that do have similarities. The NoSimilarities error is correctly returned either when the SimilarityLookup request is for one ASIN that has no similarities or when the SimilarityRequest is for two ASINs, only one of which has similarities.
Default input content encoding may not be UTF-8
The default input content encoding for ECS 4.0 is ISO-8859-1. The default content input encoding should be UTF-8.
ItemSearch using TextStream may not work for all search indexes
All SearchIndex values are not available to ItemSearch on TextStream, which includes stores like Tools, Software, and Jewelry.
New SearchIndices
ECS announces support for new search indices - Toys in DE and Pet Supplies in US. Please refer to the API Reference section of the documentation for Search Index, Sort values and SearchIndex / Parameter combinations.
ListSearch and ListLookup support for Wedding Registry (US only)
ListSearch and ListLookup operations now support Wedding Registry.
Purchases for Wishlist and Wedding Registry owners (US only)
Customers can now purchase items from Wishlists/Wedding Registry for Wishlist owners. DetailPageURL users don’t need to do anything different to benefit from this feature. Remote Shopping Cart users need to pass in the ListItemId in their CartCreate/CartAdd requests. (Note : Due to a known issue in the US locale the MergeCart value will always evaluate True regardless of how it is set.)
New Elements
A new element IsEligibleForSuperSaverShipping is now available for Amazon’s offer indicating whether an item is eligible for Super Saver Shipping. A new element Edition is now available for the Books SearchIndex indicating the edition of the item. A new element SubTotal is now available in Cart operations at the Cart, CartItems and SavedForLaterItems levels. The SubTotal elements at CartItems and SavedForLaterItems level is the subtotal of all items in the corresponding element i.e. CartItems and SavedForLaterItems. The SubTotal element at the Cart level is total of the SubTotal’s at the CartItems and SavedForLaterItems levels. (Please refer to the WSDL/schema for the location and datatype of these elements)
Changes to <Length>, <Height>, <Weight> and <Width> elements
The <Length>, <Height>, <Weight> and <Width> elements are now available within <ItemDimensions> and <PackageDimensions> elements.
SellerNickname now available in Cart operations
Cart operations now return the SellerNickname.
Changes to element data-types in the schema
The following element data-types have been modified from NonNegativeIntegerWithUnits to DecimalWithUnits to accurately represent the data returned by ECS.
AmazonMaximumAge, AmazonMinimumAge, CaseDiameter, CaseThickness, ContinuousShootingSpeed, CPUSpeed, DelayBetweenShots, DigitalZoom, DisplaySize, GraphicsMemorySize, ManufacturerMaximumAge, ManufacturerMinimumAge, MaximumAperture, MaximumResolution, MaximumShutterSpeed, MinimumShutterSpeed, MaximumWeightRecommendation, MonitorSize, MonitorViewableDiagonalSize, OpticalZoom, StoneWeight, SystemBusSpeed, TotalMetalWeight, WaterResistanceDepth
TotalReviewPages element is now supported in Reviews response group
TotalReviewPages element is now returned within the CustomerReviews element for all locales
SellerLookup operation in intl locales does not return Feedback data
The SellerLookup operation now supports Seller/SellerFeedback, Seller/AverageFeedbackRating, Seller/TotalFeedback, Seller/TotalFeedbackPages for intl locales.
More than 3 offers per condition returned when Condition=All
As per spec, ECS now returns only 3 offers per condition for ItemLookup when Condition=All. Hence the maximum returned (for US) is 12 (3 per Condition for “New”, “Used”, “Refurbished” “Collectible”).
Boolean data-types are returned as “Y/N”
Boolean data-types are now returned as “1/0”.
Missing enum elements from AudienceRating in WSDL
All documented AudienceRating enum values are now supported in the WSDL.
ListName missing in ListLookup for ListmaniaLists
This has been fixed.
Incorrect Date format in CustomerContentLookup
The Date element is now correctly formatted as “yyyy-mm-dd”.
ItemSearch for SearchIndex=Miscellaneous did not support searching by BrowseNode
This has been fixed.