Amazon Products Feed - Advanced Guide

This guide is meant to compliment the Amazon Products Feed - Beginners guide. If you have not done so, please browse through it first to get a feel for the script. If you have the Amazon Products Feed installed, configured, and working on your server, and are ready to see how to customize the script further...then this is the guide for you. You should always check the Amazon Products Feed page for updated information and MrRat's Script Support forum for help. For other scripts by MrRat, click here.

Choose a section or scroll down:

1. Templates Results
   1. Variables
   2. Page Template
   3. Products Template
   4. Item Template
   5. Other Templates
   6. FrontPage Users
2. Results
   1. Categories
   2. Search Box
3. Including search results into your web pages
   1. SSI Include
   2. PHP Include
4. Advanced Options
   1. APF options
   2. Nav Menu
5. Change Languages

Amazon Products Feed utilizes templates to display the products into a browser, there are several templates, but the most important are the Page, Products, & Item Templates. To use custom templates, you need to tell the script where they are located, if it doesn't find one it uses the embedded templates already created within the script. You do not need to customize a template if you are happy with how it displays. For example, if you are happy how the item template displays the item, then you do not need to make your own item template. You can also use different sets of templates to match different sections of your website, or if you desire a different look. That's why it's important to number your templates. It's not necessary, but it helps to keep you organized.

These would be your first template set:
page_1.template, products_1.template, item_1.template...

These would be your second template set:
page_2.template, products_2.template, item_2.template...

To specify template locations, open the script in your text editor, and find the line that says ...
# templates are comma separated lists, and if blank or non-existent will use embedded HTML

after that is where you change what you need.
@page_templates = ("page_1.template", "page_2.template");
@products_templates = ("products_1.template", "products_2.template");

Change each line for each template that you modify, you can use paths to other directories on your server as well.
@page_templates = ("page.template", "/you/can/even/supply/full/path/to_another.template");

Once you specified your templates in the script, re-upload your script in ASCII mode (you shouldn't have to CHMOD it again, but if you have problems, that's the first place to look). Then upload any templates that you have created to the same folder (unless you specified a different location in the script).

These templates use variables to display certain content, which makes it easy to design. Decide where you want the item's picture to go and place the variable there in the HTML. When making these templates, it's easiest to look at the sample template to get an idea of how each variable works. For a list of all the variables that you can use, click here. One important thing to remember when using these variables, they must have the correct format or the script will ignore them.

Always use %%variable_name%%, and remember that these are case sensitive
%%Item_URL%% is not the same as %%item_url%%.

Always look here for a complete list of variables, this is just meant to explain how the most common variables work and get you started using variables. To use these variables effectively, simply make the HTML for your page and just plug in the variable where you want the information to appear.

The most important variable is:
%%products_html%%
Your page template must have this in order to display products. This variable simply plugs any results of the script into this spot.

Other common variables for your page template are:
%%header%%
Displays either "store : subject" or the linked browse path (i.e. Bestsellers > store > subject) when applicable
%%search_box%%
Displays the Search Box for APF
%%see_next%%    %%see_prev%%
Displays next and previous page buttons

Some common variables for your products template
%%ProductName%%
Displays the name of the product results
%%my_prices%%
Displays List Price, Amazon's Price, & Savings
%%item_url%%
URL to the current product (use this for linking)

The page template is the basic HTML design of the webpage that the script results will display in. The most important variable you need on this page is %%products_html%%. This is where the script will place the resutlts that the user searches for (the products). You must have this on your page template or it will not work. When you save your templates, it's important to number each one so that they're easier to refer to them, and you should use the ".template" extension. Ex. page_1.template, page_2.template, etc...

Here is a sample page template:

One of the easiest ways to make the script results match your site is to copy the HTML from one of your pages, then build a table where you want the results to appear then add the variables like above.

Now that you have the page template done, you're ready to modify how the products look.

The item template specifies how the item information will look when you click on an individual item from the products results page. It utilizes the page template for the main HTML of the page.

Here is a sample item template:

There are several other templates that you can use, if you've mastered the page, product, and item templates, you'll have no problem modifying these.

• larger_image_templates - the HTML to display the large product image - sample
• browse_menu_templates - the HTML to display the browse cateogries sample browse_menu
• nav_menu_templates - the HTML to display the navigation menu (if used) sample nav_menu
  ...Also see Navigation Menu below
  

• sellersearch_templates - the HTML to display SellerSearch results - sample
• sellerprofile_templates - the HTML to display seller profile - sample
• thirdparty_products_templates - the HTML to display third-party products - sample

If you use FrontPage or a similar program to design and manage your site, you can use it to generate a page template. You do have to make a few modifications that are fairly simple. Make a new web page inside FrontPage with the design of your site but the content area blank (easiest way is to copy and paste a web page that has the look you want, then delete the content). Find the spot where you would like the script content to appear and type %%products_html%%. Save this file to your desktop and name it page_1.template. It's important to note how FrontPage writes hyperlinks and images to HTML. Since FrontPage saves all files/images to the same folder, it doesn't specify the directory, but this template will reside in a different directory than your pages and images, so you need to modify a bit.

Open the page in a text editor (notepad is fine) and use the search feature. Search for "href" this will highlight all of the hyperlinks in your page one at a time. If it is a hyperlink that has a full URL already, don't modify it.
By default FrontPage saves them as:
<a href="page.htm">
You simply need to specify the URL, change this to
<a href="https://www.yoursite.com/page.htm">

Same idea for your images, search for "src", and change
<img src="image.jpg">
To:
<img src="https://www.yoursite.com/image.jpg">

If you use background images anywhere in your site, search for "background" and change:
background="background.jpg"
To:
background="https://www.yoursite.com/background.jpg"

As soon as your done, save the file, then FTP it to the same folder that the script resides in (/cgi-bin/amazon/)

To modify the results that the script produces, you can specify it in the URL
You take the initial URL of the script
http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/amazon_products_feed.cgi
and add the variables after it with the first variable preceded by a ? -
http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/amazon_products_feed.cgi?mode=books
More variables can be added with all of them preceded by a & -
http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/amazon_products_feed.cgi?mode=books&templates=3

The most commonly used URL options are

mode - the mode or category that you are browsing in (Books, Computers, Video, Software, etc…)

For a list of current working modes click here
node - the number of the category to browse (sub-categories of modes)
Also see Categories below
For a list of known nodes click here

templates - which set of templates to use

input_string - the search subject

link_templates - which set of templates to use for all subsequent pages

language - which language file to use see languages

page - which page of results - Amazon sends 10 results for page 1, 10 for page 2, etc.

item - specific product(s) to display by ASIN (for books ASIN = ISBN)
search_type - type of search
... for all values for search_type click here

sort - changes the order of the results, by default the script displays by bestsellers
...for all values for sort click here

Amazon Products feed uses categories to browse through Amazon.com's product database. You can only browse/search inside of a specified category. With Amazon Web Services, it's not currently possible to search all of Amazon's products.

To display a specific category of bestsellers:
node - this is the category number that you wish to display the bestsellers of.

For information on how to find category numbers that work with Web Services click here.

The node numbers that the script already knows and uses for browsing are listed here

To add a search box to other pages of your site, simply cut-n-paste the code below:

You can insert search results into any of your web pages using a couple of ways. Search engines will even index these as part of your web page.

This stands for server-side includes, which means that when the page is requested by the users browser, your server combines this with the rest of the HTML. To do this, most hosting companies require that your pages have .shtml extensions. You can try to use these with .htm extensions to see if it will work, and some hosting companies let you specify .htm pages to utilize SSI Includes. But you need to contact your hosting for details on that.

To use an SSI Include, it's very simple, let's say you want to display the top selling video games, like here:

here's your URL:
http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/amazon_products_feed.cgi?mode=videogames&node=471280

To include these results, remove the domain name from the URL and use this
<!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/amazon_products_feed.cgi?mode=videogames&node=471280" -->

Now one roadblock to this, is it will display all of the content from your page template as well. So you should modify your page and products template to get the results you want. Basically a page template with just %%products_html%% will work, since you don't need the <HEAD><TITLE> elements. And maybe a simpler products template so it won't take up as much room.

You should only use a php inlcude if your pages are coded in php because they require the .php extension to run properly. If your pages are not php, use the SSI include above.

To do the same example as above with php use:
<?php
include_once("https://www.mrrat.com/cgi-bin/amazon_products_feed.cgi? mode=videogames&node=471280");
?>

APF options were designed so you can customize your templates even further than standard HTML.
The options and the HTML they effect are enclosed in a special comment tag.
<!--apf &option1=value&option2=value! HTML here !-->

Notice the exclamation points, they separate the different parts of the command. <!--apf tells the script that options will follow. All options must be proceeded by an & to separate them and the last option is indicated by following it with an !. Anything following that ! through !--> is considered the HTML you want to control. If the option doesn't contain HTML, like for including a text file, the exclamation points still need to be there. The examples below will show how these options can be used.

apf_start - product to start using the HTML at
This is optional if it is not specified the HTML starts with the first product.
apf_end - last product to use HTML at
You can use the word last to specify the last product. And this option will always add the HTML to the end product, which is necessary to close off any open <TR>s.
apf_repeat - how often to repeat the HTML
If 1 use with every product, 2 every other product, 3 every third, etc.
apf_include - include a text file or nav_menu. If you have HTML that you use on many pages (like the menu links at the bottom of all of my pages) you can use this option to include that file in the template. See example 3 below to better understand this feature. See Nav Menu to understand how to include the Navigation Menu

If you look at this page, you may notice a navigation menu on the left of the products, this menu changes as you choose different categories. It will display the different sub-categories for whatever category you are in. You can change how this looks by modifying the nav_menu template. To use this in your page use the following tag in your page template above your %%products_html%% as in this sample page template. This utilizes the APF Options described above.

<!--apf &apf_include=nav_menu!
<TD Valign="top" Width="160"><TABLE Bgcolor="#FFDC91" Width="100%"> %%nav_menu_html%%</TABLE></TD>
!-->

the Navigation menu uses the nav_menu template. To use one other than the default, upload it to your server and specify it in the script:
@nav_menu_templates = ("nav_menu_1.template", "nav_menu_2.template");

Languages work like the templates. Simple text files of all the variables that contain the text the script displays that does not come from Amazon. If you wish to create your own language file please use the sample English file as a starting point and be sure and send me a copy so we can share it with others. I would like to provide as many different languages as possible.

@language_templates should point to a file (or files) that contains the language you wish to display. If blank or non-existent will use embedded English. Language files:
@language_templates = ("apf_english.language", "apf_dutch.language");
English - example file

You specify which language to use in the URL with language.
http://www.mrrat.com/cgi-bin/amazon_products_feed.cgi?mode=books&language=1

If you have a file named apf_de.language in the same directory as the script it will automatically be loaded when you use locale=de to provide support for Amazon.de.

To display multiple languages in HTML there is a special charset (character set) called Unicode. This is the format that Amazon sends their results in and so it is what my script uses. To use accented characters in the language files you must use Unicode entities. Entities are just &#(a number);. I wrote a script to display the characters and show the entity for each so you can use them in your language file - Unicode Generator.