This post is a follow-up to my earlier one about using SOAP requests in ASP.Net to access the eBay API. I've finally figured out how to make it work! A few key things to note: most requests need the "version" attribute, some require the "DetailLevel" attribute, and you'll need an eBay Authentication Token (a cryptographic hash) for security. When using the WSDL URL, remember to include query string parameters so eBay knows what to do. I've included some sample C# code demonstrating how to build the request URL, set credentials, and handle the response.
I'm exploring the eBay API using ASP.NET and SOAP. It's proving a bit cumbersome due to its monolithic structure. Ideally, each API call would have its own WSDL and SOAP interface for easier management. Currently, I'm stuck on generating a User Token for authentication, having tried my developer account, regular eBay account, and a new account without success. Any advice on obtaining a User Token would be greatly appreciated!
I've been exploring Amazon's SOAP API and Yahoo's REST API and I'm quite impressed with both. I'm thinking about ways to make these two APIs interact and will share my ideas in a future post. I've also been working on using REST in .Net 1.1, which is a little tricky but possible, thanks to Martin G. Brown's work. The process involves using an XSD of the response, running it through XSD.exe to generate a Dataset object, and then processing the results. It's a similar concept to WSDL, but without the automatic stub generation. I'll post some Yahoo API code examples soon. I plan to look into Google's API as well, even though it's in beta with usage restrictions.
