Hacks 1917 Industrial.. Strength Tips and Tools [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 88 Submit an Auction Listing

Use AddItem to start new listings and make
scheduling easier.

eBay's Turbo Lister,
introduced in [Hack #73], is an
API-based tool used to submit new listings to eBay. It provides a
complete interface with which the user can create and modify
listings, as well as a database engine that stores them. (Factoid:
35% of eBay listings are reportedly submitted with the API, including
those uploaded with Turbo Lister.)

All the work is done by the AddItem API call,
illustrated by this extremely simple script:

#!/usr/bin/perl
require 'ebay.pl';
$category    = shift @ARGV;
$title        = shift @ARGV;
$description = shift @ARGV;
$minimum_bid = shift @ARGV;
defined($minimum_bid)
or die "Usage: $0 category title description minimumbid";
$country = 'us';
$location = 'My home town';
$duration = 7;
$quantity = 1;
$currency = 1;
my $rsp = call_api({ Verb => 'AddItem',     [1]
DetailLevel => 0,
SiteId => $site_id,
Category => $category,
CheckoutDetailsSpecified => 0,
Country => $country,
Currency => $currency,
Description => $description,
Duration => $duration,
Location => $location,
MinimumBid => $minimum_bid,
PaymentOther => 1,
Quantity => $quantity,
Region => 0,
Title => $title,
});
if ($rsp->{Errors}) {
print_error($rsp)
} else {
print "New listing created: #$rsp->{Item}[0]{Id}\n";     [2]
print "Ends $rsp->{Item}[0]{EndTime}\n";
}

The simplest way to use this script is to call it from the command
line, like this:

additem.pl 7276 'Little Red Steam Shovel' 'My description...' 5.00

However, it will probably make more sense to call it from another
script or program, especially since you'll likely
want more of a description than simply "My
description . . . " and more options than the four
required by this sample script.

Although AddItem calls do not count against your daily (or monthly) API call allotment, the listing fees normally associated with starting new auctions still apply. The same goes for the RelistItem call, discussed in [Hack #92].

8.8.1 Hacking the Hack

Of the more than 120 individual input fields supported by the
AddItem call, only 11 are required:
Category,
CheckoutDetailsSpecified,
Country, Currency,
Description, Duration,
Location, MinimumBid,
Quantity, Region, and
Title. But when submitting a live listing,
you'll most likely want to include as many options
as possible, everything from the shipping charges to the extra-cost
listing upgrades. Refer to the API documentation for a complete
listing, and place any additional fields alongside the others on line [1].

As discussed in [Hack #99],
it's important to save as much retrieved information
as possible so that you can reduce the number of subsequent API calls
needed. If you submit listings only with the
AddItem API call (never through eBay.com), you
should record the item numbers it returns
($rsp->{Item}[0]{Id}) for further use. This
would reduce (or eliminate) your need for the
GetSellerList API call used in so many of
the hacks in this chapter at least when it comes to
retrieving a listing of your own auctions.

8.8.2 See Also

The eBay API SDK comes with the eBay Sample Selling Application, a
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET-based listing creation tool similar to
Turbo Lister. Those interested in creating a similar tool will want
to poke around in the included C source code.