Amazon UK RSS
The contact form is already paying off. ;) Got a great question from Kolin about adapting the Amazon RSS Feed-Builder to make feeds for Amazon.co.uk products. I thought I'd share the answer so other folks across the pond can build feeds for their Amazon.
Here's how the modification for UK works: create a keyword feed with the feed builder like normal. For example, you could type "Beatles" under CD Feeds. Then click on the resulting RSS feed. You should get an XML page in your browser that has a long Amazon URL like this:
US Beatles RSS Feed
(Take a look at the URL of the link above in your browser status bar, or copy to a text editor.) You need to make two changes.
UK Beatles RSS Feed
Presto, Amazon.co.uk RSS feed! Unfortunately, category IDs can differ across Amazon sites, so only Keyword/Author and Power Search feeds will adapt reliably. If you want to go through the hassle of finding the UK-specific category IDs, you can still use the feed-builder to get you most of the way there.
Here's a quick way to find UK category IDs. Go to the UK website, and click something under "Browse" on the lefthand side of the page. Then drill down to something like, "Art, Architecture & Photography". You get a URL like this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/91/
(There's some junk after that last slash on the site, but this is the good stuff we care about.) After browse/-/ in the URL is the category ID for "Art, Architecture, & Photography" books: 91.
Now that you know the ID, create a category book feed with the Amazon RSS Feed-Builder, make the UK changes above, and change the category ID in the URL. The category ID is called "Browse Node" in Amazon lingo. And the piece of the URL you need to change is BrowseNodeSearch=x. (and in this case, x = 91.) There you have it, an Amazon RSS feed for Art, Architecture & Photography books at Amazon UK.
Of course, the easiest way to build UK feeds would be for someone to build a UK-specific Amazon RSS Feed-Builder—but then you wouldn't get the thrill that comes with Amazon Hacking on your own.
Here's how the modification for UK works: create a keyword feed with the feed builder like normal. For example, you could type "Beatles" under CD Feeds. Then click on the resulting RSS feed. You should get an XML page in your browser that has a long Amazon URL like this:
US Beatles RSS Feed
(Take a look at the URL of the link above in your browser status bar, or copy to a text editor.) You need to make two changes.
- Add &locale=uk to the end of the URL.
- Change the domain to xml-eu.amazon.com.
UK Beatles RSS Feed
Presto, Amazon.co.uk RSS feed! Unfortunately, category IDs can differ across Amazon sites, so only Keyword/Author and Power Search feeds will adapt reliably. If you want to go through the hassle of finding the UK-specific category IDs, you can still use the feed-builder to get you most of the way there.
Here's a quick way to find UK category IDs. Go to the UK website, and click something under "Browse" on the lefthand side of the page. Then drill down to something like, "Art, Architecture & Photography". You get a URL like this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/91/
(There's some junk after that last slash on the site, but this is the good stuff we care about.) After browse/-/ in the URL is the category ID for "Art, Architecture, & Photography" books: 91.
Now that you know the ID, create a category book feed with the Amazon RSS Feed-Builder, make the UK changes above, and change the category ID in the URL. The category ID is called "Browse Node" in Amazon lingo. And the piece of the URL you need to change is BrowseNodeSearch=x. (and in this case, x = 91.) There you have it, an Amazon RSS feed for Art, Architecture & Photography books at Amazon UK.
Of course, the easiest way to build UK feeds would be for someone to build a UK-specific Amazon RSS Feed-Builder—but then you wouldn't get the thrill that comes with Amazon Hacking on your own.
http://xml.amazon.com/xsl/xml-rss091.xsl
The product data you'll see is coming from the UK Web Services site, even though the channel will say "Amazon.com" in your newsreader. Also, the links will go to Amazon.com, because that's hard coded as well. To do UK feed right, Amazon will need to change their RSS stylesheet--or someone will need to provide an alternative. But hey, at least you can get the UK product listings.