APIs

[jsp_1983]

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Do any of you use them? How easy/ hard would you say it is to use them to integrate merchant content and data in to your site? What prerequisites are there for trying to implement an API on your site?

I like the idea of presenting a lot of the merchant information on my own site, rather than simply getting people to click through to a merchant's site.

I suppose the drawback is that it can affect conversion rates either way, depending on the quality of your own site, yes?

[accelerator]

Affiliate Window's ShopWindow Forum has an API sub-forum which may be of interest to you.

Rgds

[scriptmonkey]

For displaying content on your website, APIs are the best thing since sliced bread, forget downloading data, converting it, ironing out the problems, the weird encoding, I could go on, APIs just work, and, they're pretty easy to use, if you have a bit of coding knowledge.

Its worth learning how to make calls and process the results from those calls. Each API differs in its requirements, but, there are fairly standard methodologies, SOAP - Simple Object Access Protocol and REST - Representational state transfer being the two most widely used.

Essentially, it goes like this.

• Create code to query remote server.
• Process those results on your server.
• Display those results in a pleasing manner on your pages.

Prerequisites are

1. A decent server or hosting package.
2. An ability to survive without sleep for 2 or 3 days at a time.
3. A hard forehead, for banging on the wall or table.

If you have coding experience and a working knowledge of arrays then its easy, otherwise, it requires learning about them, then its easy.

[jsp_1983]

Interesting...

I don't have any coding experience and I'm not particularly adept at it. I can work my way around a Wordpress theme and tweak it a little bit, but that's more the style elements in it.

Where do you recommend I go from here to know enough to start working with APIs, but not wanting to go all the way with coding?

[Leeky]

I always find the best way is to download some free api powered scripts / websites and take a look at each file to see how they work.

Here are some of ours... im not trying to promote anything here, this is just for you to see what the coding looks like and to give you a rough idea.

http://www.affiliatescript.co.uk/fre...ree_v3.2.0.zip an amazon api website
http://www.affiliatescript.co.uk/shopping2.zip a shopping.com api website
http://webservices.icodes.co.uk/downloads/framework.zip a voucher code api framework

Lee

[jsp_1983]

Thanks, Lee.

Had a quick look through the first one you link to - doesn't make any sense to me at all, but I'll have another look tomorrow.

A lot of sites using APIs seem to just use all the content supplied by the merchant - how easy is it to mix it with your own content? This is primarily what I want to do; I'd like to create unique descriptions, but have prices, availability and other attributes provided directly from the merchant.

[paulb567]

A lot of sites using APIs seem to just use all the content supplied by the merchant

Do you have any examples of sites that do this? I'm not aware I've seen any, maybe I wonder round with my eyes closed.