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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
The best existing source for this information, July 1, 2005
This book is the only resource I've been able to find that pulls together the current information on Amazon's E-Commerce Service platform *and* applies it to PHP development. I wouldn't say I have the deepest PHP skills in the world, but I found that I could easily apply the exercises in this book to my own projects.
It helps that the book is well-written and engaging (something I've come to NOT expect from the tech-book mills that usually churn out books like this).
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Interested in Integration with Amazon ? This is the best place to start., August 21, 2005
I just got done reading and hacking the book and have found many new ways in which to interface with amazon.com web services. The book delivers on its title and does so to a broad audience in a clean style. You will need to understand XML technologies at a beginner's level and be proficient in PHP in order to fully utilize this book. Novices can also learn from this book.
Thanks Jason Levitt
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent introduction to Amazon web services, September 17, 2005
I am relative novice when it comes to using web services but I have some experience with PHP. I found the examples in this book very useful for illustrating how to get up and running quickly while giving a good foundation for more experimentation. The Author does not give away all of the answers to building a complete Amazon app which I found to be be nice because it made me think of other more imaginative ways to use them.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
An excellent resource for web developers, March 28, 2006
Some of the reviewers seem to be wishing for a "..for Dummies" book. This aint it. What this book is is an excellent overview of the entire Amazon e-commerce platform from the perspective of a web developer. It is written by a web developer for web developers, full stop. And as far as that statement is true, this is an excellent (and inexpensive 8-) resource.
That said, there is most certainly an opportunity for some author out there to write a down and dirty guide to Amazon e-commerce for folks with mom'n'pop websites. Indeed, how about a down'n'dirty guide to amazon/ebay/google/yahoo services..as well as RSS..you name it? A gaping hole in the market IMHO.
Well, I digress: the current book is excellent and heartily recommended to developers and tech-savvy website managers who don't mind skipping some gory details to read a very good overview of what Amazon has on offer.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
delighted ... with organization & stunning depth, August 17, 2005
If you're serious about learning the Amazon commercial API's, I can't imagine a better organized source. From API evolution and internationalization to web services alternatives to in-depth chapters on itemSearch, pagination, sorting, product details & variations. How do you find information on customer vs. sellers? How do you implement remote carts?
Succinctly written and chock full; I really can't fathom what more the other reviewers were expecting. I'm just tickled silly that all this information is gathered and presented so easily ... and for such a reasonable price.
Thank you - for the tremendous effort it must certainly have taken - to put this together. I am very grateful.
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13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
The Book Author Responds..., June 18, 2005
Response to "not much support..."
I'm not sure if this person wanted a different kind of book (perhaps a beginner's tutorial) or simply free support. In any case, his claim that he is "not a web developer" makes the purchase of "The Web Developer's Guide..." a questionable decision. I do provide numerous *working* scripts that are free to download -- you can run many of them from the home page of the book web site by simply clicking on a link. My scripts are meant to teach the fundamental concepts of Amazon E-Commerce Service 4.0. If he needs a forum to learn more about E-Commerce Service, the link to Amazon's forums is also on my book web site. As far as support, my scripts work. If he wants to modify them, reading and understanding my book will provide much of what he needs to know.
==========================
Response to "Good Start..."
I appreciate Mr. Nikolic's compliments, but, as far as his criticisms, it sounds like he had a very certain set of expectations, and the book didn't meet them.
He correctly points out that I do not include a "list of all elements returned for any response group." I deliberately left out that list (it's just a reference list, nothing more) because it changes fairly often, and would have required that I add many extra pages to the appendix -- I simply didn't feel that was worth the added book costs and size. I *do* provide the reader with an easy way to access the list (see page 92) using their web browser, or they can simply download the WSDL file and use that. Those lists are guaranteed to be current.
(...) For most of the code samples, you can simply put them on a web server and run them. For others, you need to learn some things about Amazon (or buy the book). Ultimately, the Sourceforge project is just an archive and feedback forum for the samples, not a full-fledged API or source library.
He calls the scripts "too inflexible," but provides no specifics at all about what is too infexible about them. My scripts aren't designed to be general-purpose. They illustrate specific concepts (how to traverse browse nodes, how to retrieve product variations, how to use a remote cart, how to access wishlists, etc.), but are easily extended or modified to use for other purposes.
I give myself five stars because I put a lot of work into this book, and I had to make some hard choices about how to cover the material -- what to leave out and how to teach it.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A bit too soon into XML / WSDL, July 14, 2006
I think this book is great, first time I have seen it advertized I thought: "I have to get this". Have not finished reading it yet, I am about one third through, but I think one of the big flaws (if not indeed the author meant it that way) is that it dives into XML / WSDL / SOAP too soon or too sudden... at least for me. By the time I have started understanting how everything is organized in the scheme of things, it was all about that, and I personally don't have experience --- a lot with these things.
Another thing I don't particularly enjoy is the presentation is intertwined -- PHP 4 and PHP 5. At times this is confusing and if you just browse trough trying to find something randomly, you always have to read back a little bit to find out whether it's about PHP 4 or 5.
Otherwise, I am pretty happy with it and can't wait to actually start implementing some things I heave learned in this book in my own applications.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Easy to read - easy to comprehend., August 2, 2005
Amazon has done an amazing job of creating a very simple API, which Jason Levitt does an excellent job of explaining. Easy to read, easy to comprehend, now let's see what kind of user interface you can build with this tool. And maybe, just maybe, someone will benefit from what you've built, buy something from Amazon, and you can share in the sale.
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Not bad for the price, September 30, 2005
The info doesn't do a very good job explaining bits of the code. They just give you a few pages of code at a time and then shows you what the end result looks like. I would have preferred it covering less topics and explaining them better. This book is good if you already have a high traffic site and want to add another feature. Amazon web services may not be the best place if you are wanting to make some income from selling their stuff. The book says it is better if you have something to sell through amazon web services. I also couldn't get one example to work so I emailed the author but didn't get any reply.
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7 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
Free Support, June 17, 2005
Written on 08/30/2005 I returned to delete the original review,
because it occurred to me that the starring average will pop
higher. This was a regret from my original post, my first on
Amazon. When I arrived, I found another reader of the book had
received rebuttle.
The following is the suggestion that caused me to respond today.
It is suggested that this reader simply wanted free support.
Is this why he or she purchased this book?
The effect fails to follow the reason inferred.
Listen closely: these are patrons that have purchased this book,
and are potential future customers, employers, or clients.
There is nothing more public than the web; a published book comes
close second. In any public undertaking, criticism occurs.
I am often publicly vocal. It follows that I am also often
publicly criticised.
This is a natural tendancy of any environment where one
individual attempts to influence another individual or group.
This is likely one of the effects of self-publishing through Lulu
Press: because of the absence of guidance from a publisher or an
editor, there is no one to tell you which bullets to bite.
Be careful of childishness.
Rather than the current theme of reaction, instead: listen.
You have a reader wondering why there isn't a support forum on
the book's homepage. He is right, it should exist. For technology
books it is standard fare.
You will see why once you create it. Let readers support other
readers and give each other more ways to use this book, or any
monograph you create in the future.
Attention is brought to the fact that this reader is not a web
developer, and so could not harvest what real value the book
offered.
I grant that the book's title includes the words, "Web
Developer," although, another title including the words,
"Beginning with PHP and Amazon Web Services" or "Cookbook" is the
real opportunity implicit in this reader's statements.
Possibly another good idea is a "free" Primer Preface in the form
of a downloadable PDF from the book's home page, that would not
only prime this reader, but also any other potential readers with
the same level of experience, and give other potential readers
with greater experience a taste of the work, whetting their
appetite for the potential value in this book...
All of this said, is it notable that no defense is attempted to
any rebuttle regarding my own review stamped with my own REAL
NAME(TM) and unchanged entries? Is why apparent?
=====
The text that follows has been added on 06/19/2005 and is
unchanged since.
This was my first review. I came back to see if the review had
been added to find a response note by the author, and I was
surprised. This led me to think of the effect on the writer. I
have no intention to unduly effected the future sales of the book
- not by a longshot. I am completely glad that it is available.
It is unfortunate that this was the first review; it slammed the
starring average. I am sure that it will improve as other readers
consume the book.
Let me apologize some of my biases: I was a user of the original
AmazonLib as well as have used and tested a number of other
software libraries and API dealing with the Amazon Web Services.
That said, I was led to the book by the release of AmazonLib 2
(probably uncommon as opposed to searching on this site).
(...)
I bought the book to give a vote of confidence to the writer and
hopefully learn from his experience. And his experience shouldn't
be understated; he is one of the earliest adopters of the Amazon
Web Services platform that does their work in PHP. I was quite
satisfied with this aspect of the book.
For instance, the deft handling of explaining the BrowseNode,
Amazon's seemingly completely nonsensical array of categorization
- any walk through Amazon's dedicated forums will expose many
contributors scrambling over "What happened with * ?" and
BrowseNode usually replaces the star in more than half of the
cases. The book goes to show that it is just about as nosensical
as you had thought, but shows some ways at combating this with
cross-referencing products and categories.
Another example of experience in the book deals with making
requests to the Amazon image servers for variations as well as
adding more fine-grained requests for dynamic content such as the
"percent-off" or "look-inside" stamps. This is something that
isn't in the Amazon Web Services documention, and so is a great
example of what can be used in the book without resorting to a
mess of harrowing trial and error, because the author has done so
for you.
The same goes for tips on creating Amazon AssociateIDs on the
worldwide Amazon sites, when you are even unable to read the
language - how many people do you, the reader, know that can
speak 5+ human languages, plus program in PHP or write templates
in XSLT? I have met none. Again, this is an example of the
author's experience dutifully put into the pages of this book.
To clarify my criticism regarding application inflexibility, the
coding presented in the book may be modified - just as any ideas
can be modified to new needs - but a many may find that they are
quite difficult to customize as the there are some very specific
references to the needs of the appliation at hand. (Truthfully, I
wouldn't wish weeding through 4-9 dimensional arrays on my
enemies --- ...Well, come to think of it, on a few enemies I
would - but they probably already do so.)
This leads to my criticism regarding the absence of a catalogue
of returned elements. This was possibly quite unfair - but it is
worth noting that in previous versions of the Amazon Web Services
there were far fewer options with returning data to your
applications - this flexibility is useful, as bandwidth for
unwanted extra data costs everyone money and time - it also comes
at the cost of far more complexity. While in past versions of
the Amazon Web Services you had few options of return (say two,
light and heavy) you now have *numerous combinations of 36
response groups. Some of these may not be used together, while
others can be combined.
*To oversimplify - that is, assuming the response groups could
all be used together in any context; please note that they can't
be used this way - that is Factorial of 36 minus 1 possible
combinations, or 3.7199332678990121746799944815084e+41 possible
combinations.
Letting the details wash away --- again, this is very simplified
--- 41 zeros after any number of scenarios ultimately points to
a programmer's worst nightmare to support them all. Think of a
musician, now give that musician a piece of music that asks them
to concurrently play all possible notes on their instrument for 2
hours straight --- then, watch them helplessly faint.
I was hoping for help with this new complexity, and there IS
some. However, it wasn't in the format or depth for my own
purposes. This is as much a flaw in the Amazon Web Services still
having more in common how the information is created then
consumed, as my needs, the book's content, an act of God, or
anything else.
The more pious readers will wonder, "What else is there?" My
answer is, "I'm not sure." (Again, frame of reference coming into
play...)
What I do know, is that the content in this book attempts to
instruct on dealing with the Amazon Web Services from the
standpoint of an XSLT templater, a PHP4 *and* PHP5 developer,
make use of integral libraries to PHP for parsing XML, pre-PHP5
staples such as NuSoap, makes use of his own XML parser, deals
with handling data from other counties --- unfamiliar encoding
included, as well as attempts to provide some good habits from an
experiential standpoint in it's pages.
This is quite a bit to do in any book, and this is done
relatively well - understandably spread thin, but done well all
the same.
As a last topic for this edited review, I would like to focus on
the overall value of the book. This is a book that needed to
exist. I am quite appalled that no other publisher has taken the
project on to date.
And why not? There are nearly a million current Amazon Associates
currently registered with Amazon, and more on the way. But, most
of them find limited success, and that is due to inability to
handle the technology with care, as well as inappropriate
application of the web services to users' needs.
Granted, such a focused book wouldn't likely hit a best-seller's
list, but no technical book would do so... Well, save one, "My
System" by Aaron Nimzovitch. This is a chess book that was
confused with Hitler's "Mein Kampf," pushing it's sales to
best-seller levels. Funny, a little sad, but true. No other
technical book will ever be a best-seller. And considering those
circumstances, I would hope that there is never another one.
This is the *only* book that attests to this need at the time of
publication.
The book goes a long way to aid handling the web services in
better fashion, my original criticism was that it didn't go the
entire distance with regard to handling the web services well.
The feature I felt was important would likely have added another
50 pages to the book, as well as another $5-$15 to the price.
It is likely that I wasn't fair in bemoaning it.
Let me also mention price while the topic is at hand. This book
has 476 pages (including index) but still costs a extremely
affordable $15.
The content is quite good - particularly in light of it being a
first book for such a price. You will not find anything else that
does this as well - or at all.
For instance, the content-scant Friends of ED line will charge a
minimum of $50 for less
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