Overview
Improved Speed, Accuracy, and Convenience—Yours for the Taking
eBay is continuously improving the features it offers buyers and sellers. Now, the biggest improvements are ones you can build for yourself.
Mining eBay Web Services teaches you to create custom applications that automate buying and selling tasks and make searches more precise. Do you have dozens of items to sell? You can prepare complete descriptions and terms and submit them all with one click. Are you searching for an item with special purchasing or shipping conditions? You can't do this manually, but your custom application can. Would you benefit from charting your buying and selling trends? This book shows you how to mine and organize information that simply isn't available otherwise.
All by itself, the improvement in speed will dwarf anything you've experienced—especially if you connect to eBay via dial-up. But speed is just one piece of an entirely new way of navigating the eBay marketplace. Here's a little of what you'll find covered inside:
- Creating new listings in bulk and automatically submitting them
- Getting all the facts you need about an item in one step
- Performing searches based on shipping or payment terms
- Completing tasks more quickly by working with locally stored eBay data
- Working with eBay's new authentication and authorization technology
- Ensuring the accuracy of your listings
- Quickly accessing buyer and seller information
- Using the new Java and SOAP interfaces
- Using calls to perform tasks not supported by the manual interface
- Charting trends in your buying and selling habits
- Tracking eBay listings with mobile devices
- Developing secure applications
- Automatically submitting feedback in batches
You'll learn to do all of this and more using the language of your choice: JavaScript, VBA, Visual Basic 6, Visual C++ 6, Visual Basic .NET, C#, PHP, or Java. You also get all the details on participating in various eBay developer programs, where everything you need as an individual is completely free.
Synopsis
This guide explains how to get the most out of the eBay Web Services package. Although aimed at a broad audience of corporate developers, small retailers, and students, it will be most useful to those who already have some basic programming skills. Mueller (a technical editor and author of more than 60 books) provides detailed instructions for creating custom eBay Web Services applications that automate buying and selling tasks and make searches more precise. These applications may be written using any of the following languages: VBA, Visual Studio, PHP, or Java. Annotation © 2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewIf you’re serious about eBay and you have at least moderate technical skills, eBay Web Services are like manna from heaven. They’ll help you automate everything from defining searches to accessing buyer data -- even creating hundreds of new listings or feedbacks at once. John Paul Mueller has written about the easiest eBay Web Services book imaginable.
Mueller gently walks you through setting up your system to use eBay Web Services, and making your connection (through eBay’s strong security certification process). There’s detailed coverage of search, and of working with the data eBay returns. Since you’ll need basic programming skills to go further, Mueller offers simple introductions to eBay Web Services programming with JavaScript, PHP, Java, C++, VB, VB.NET (and for Windows users with modest coding skills, VBA). Bill Camarda
Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2003 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.