All products listed on Amazon's websites are classified into groups, such as product type (books, music, tools, or apparel), brand, subject, genre, style, and so on. The hierarchy of groups is called a browse area, where each group has a particular browse node ID in the browse area.
By default, the BrowseNodeLookup operation enables you to retrieve information about a browse node, including the browse node's name and a list of its browse node children and ancestors. Each child and ancestors contains the browse node name and ID.
The BrowseNodeLookup operation enables you to search for items for sale by traversing the browse node hierarchy. Going down the hierarchy, from parent to child nodes, leads to subsets of product groups. For example, going from the "Shoes" browse node to "Men's Shoes" filters out unwanted items in responses. Going up the hierarchy, from child to parent nodes, generalizes the search. For example, going from "Men's Shoes" to "Shoes" shows the product category to which "Men's Shoes" belongs.
The value of BrowseNodeLookup is that is enables you to search by a specific browse node ID. Other operations, including ItemSearch, ItemLookup, SimilarityLookup, and ListLookup, can return browse node information but their searches are based on item attributes, search indices, and lists.
BrowseNodeLookup is only available in the US locale (Amazon.com)
Using BrowseNodeLookup (REST)
This example demonstrates how BrowseNodeLookup can be used.
http://webservices.amazon.com/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService &AWSAccessKeyId=[Your Access Key ID Here] &Operation=BrowseNodeLookup &BrowseNodeId=1065852
Request parameters specify the terms of your request and control the output data that is returned to you.
You must include the required parameters in every request.
BrowseNodeLookup accepts the optional parameters that are common to all operations:
The following parameters are specific to the BrowseNodeLookup operation:
| Parameter | Description | Required? | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operation | The operation. | Always Required | BrowseNodeLookup |
| BrowseNodeId |
The BrowseNodeId parameter specifies the browse node ID of the category that you want to retrieve information about. |
Always Required |
Valid Value:
|
| ResponseGroup |
Controls the data returned by the operation. Use this parameter to specify which response group(s), or group(s) of data elements, you would like Amazon E-Commerce Service (ECS) to return to you. You can specify as many response groups as you wish using a comma-separated list (REST) or multiple elements (SOAP). |
Always Optional |
Default Values Valid Values |