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Amazon recommendations - Images and (or) Text

Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 12:13 pm
by zvenson
Hi everyone! I recently installed serendipity 1.4 and found it supperior to wordpress (which is quite amazing i think).

But now i have a little question, hopefully not to often asked because i couldn`t find a solution in this forum for my problem.

I installed the "amazon recommondations" plugin, added asins, and the pictures of the products where not shown. I only got text - then i figured out, the the asin thing and the image server from amazon have changed so i uploaded the images manually to the /uploads/amazon/ directory and gave them names according to the asins. Now i only get the images whithout texts, prices etc. Now i`m really confused. What did i do wrong? There is no possibility to configure the plugin in the backend or did i miss something?

If anyone could give me a hint :idea: - i would be very thankfull!

Thanks a lot!

zvenson!

Re: Amazon recommendations - Images and (or) Text

Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 7:16 pm
by garvinhicking
Hi!

Sadly I think that Amazon has changed its API so that our old way does not really work anymore. Matthew Groeninger planned to work on a new version of th eplugin, but it's quite complex and I believe he has not succeeded yet. :-/

Thanks a lot for your s9y praise! I'm currently on vacation (and thus a bit short on time) but I could try to reach Matthew next week or see if there's maybe a possibility to hotfix the current problem somehow.

Regards,
Garvin

Re: Amazon recommendations - Images and (or) Text

Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 7:49 pm
by sonichouse
I looked at this a long time ago, and the URLs may have changed again.

The discussion was here... if that helps.

The alternative approach is to use a html nugget and embed the code from the amazon partner programme.

Re: Amazon recommendations - Images and (or) Text

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 3:43 am
by zvenson
Wow! A forum where i get answers! I'm overwhelmed as i was starting to get frustrated by other forums where nobody was answering anything - i'm starting to love serendipity (after 1.5 days of use :-D)!

Thanks garvin - but take your time - have a nice vacation as your vacation is more important - my problem is not very urgend and it can be solved like sonichouse said with a html nugged (nice tip sonic - thank you for this as well!), or i can just use images and put the texts i want to show in the images - i know - not very elegant but for the moment this is fine for me.

Re: Amazon recommendations - Images and (or) Text

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 5:27 am
by mgroeninger
Hi all,
Just a quick update on the Amazon stuff. (And kind of a thread hijack... sorry)

Garvin, I have a rewrite of the Amazon Media Button plugin close to finished. Things to do are:
  1. Polish css/html. (Right now all the tags are just div and spans without classes or id.)
  2. Separate the Amazon functions into a included file so that we can reuse it fairly easily.
  3. Document setup/changes in a format users can easily see.
The new features are:
  1. Fully templated
  2. Dynamic refresh of data
  3. Enables inclusion of fields previously excluded because of Terms issues (price/availability)
  4. Two levels of caching (one for plugin output, one for xml response that can be used across plugins)
  5. Uses REST, eliminating the requirement of nuSoup library
Single biggest disadvantage:
Because of Amazons requirements to sign all requests with a private "key", and because Amazon has linked the private "key" with billable services, I can no longer ship the plugin with a developer key. Users will need to create a developer account themselves to run the plugin.

As I have rewritten the plugin, I kept in mind the idea that I can port the Amazon functions to other plugins, specifically the Recommendations plugin (though I really want to write a wrapper plugin for Wish Lists, too) and I think porting my functions will be pretty simple. Hopefully I will have a polished Media Button version to send to Garvin next week for review, and I will take a look a updating the Recommendations plugin to be more useful.

Zvenson, let me know if you would like to test the updated Recommendations plugin when I get to it. I'd be happy to have someone test out my code before it goes in spartacus. (this goes for the Media Button plugin, too :) )

Hope everyone is doing well!

Re: Amazon recommendations - Images and (or) Text

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 6:49 am
by zvenson
HEy!
Nice to hearing from you! Yes i would be honored to test your new version, though i have a developer key from amazon already and i think that i can manage to give you (hopefully) competent feedback on it!
Let me know what i can do and send me your code so i can try it out!
Best regards
zvenson!

Re: Amazon recommendations - Images and (or) Text

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 5:16 pm
by garvinhicking
Hi Matthew!

Wow, that's awesome! Great stuff. I'd happily try to help with the things that remain to be done!
Because of Amazons requirements to sign all requests with a private "key", and because Amazon has linked the private "key" with billable services, I can no longer ship the plugin with a developer key. Users will need to create a developer account themselves to run the plugin.
I think if we properly document this, that shouldn't be too hard to setup for the user. I'll try to write up a shiny documentation (if you want me to have a try, since I haven't used the amazon plugin yet) and make use of our new Doucmentaiton.html direct linking from within the plugin.

I think the amazon thing is a very nice plugin solution, and I'm also motivated to finally get involved in this, so I hope I'll be able to push things forward with you. :)

Best regards,
Garvin

Re: Amazon recommendations - Images and (or) Text

Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 2:33 am
by mgroeninger
Hey Garvin,
If you want to work on documentation, it would help a lot.

I think a user would just have to go here:
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp ... /main.html

and go through the "Sign up now" steps. Unfortunately I did it so long ago I have no idea what it looks like.

Would you mind if I send you a gzip of my code before I throw it at CVS? I haven't submitted anything in so long I'd love to have some oversight on it so I don't do anything hugely bad.

Hope things are good everyone,
Matt

Re: Amazon recommendations - Images and (or) Text

Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 7:45 pm
by garvinhicking
Hi!

Yeah, sure, please feel free to send me a version of it. I would then signup for an amazon api key myself and could document the process.

Best regards,
Garvin

Re: Amazon recommendations - Images and (or) Text

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 8:19 am
by mgroeninger
Garvin and zvenson, I have sent both of you a beta of the plugin.

If anyone else is following this thread and would like a beta copy, please let me know. It is a big change and I would like to test it as much as possible before Amazon shuts down the old plugin on August 15th.

Re: Amazon recommendations - Images and (or) Text

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 11:43 am
by sonichouse
I wouldn't mind test driving this as well.
/Steve

Re: Amazon recommendations - Images and (or) Text

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 10:05 pm
by sonichouse
Not sure if the PM to you worked as it is just sitting in my outbox :?:

I patched the dependency so I was able to load and install as I am running 1.4.

I added my keys etc, and the button appears when creating an entry :) .

I choose books and Pratchett, press search and got this ...

Code: Select all

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare sha256() in /mypath/public_html/plugins/serendipity_event_amazonchooser/sha256/sha256.inc.php on line 212

Re: Amazon recommendations - Images and (or) Text

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 10:14 pm
by mgroeninger
I just got your PM, so it won't be in your outbox anymore... *grin*

I'll add a check for this in a couple of hours when I get home from work. I hadn't anticipated anyone having a sha256 function (which I probably should have). I'll PM you a link to a new beta, and include a some patch code if you don't want to download again.

Sorry about that.

Also, I believe the requirement of 1.4.1 is there because the plugin now supports the WYSIWYG editor. (Thanks to Garvin!) I think that is an important enough feature that we will require 1.4.1. Garvin, does moving the requirement back to 1.4 impact the button functionality?

Re: Amazon recommendations - Images and (or) Text

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 11:20 pm
by sonichouse
mgroeninger wrote:Also, I believe the requirement of 1.4.1 is there because the plugin now supports the WYSIWYG editor. (Thanks to Garvin!) I think that is an important enough feature that we will require 1.4.1. Garvin, does moving the requirement back to 1.4 impact the button functionality?
The wysiwyg editing works fine for me in 1.4 - check your PM for details 8)

Re: Amazon recommendations - Images and (or) Text

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 2:46 am
by mgroeninger
Thanks for the PM!

I haven't really followed changes to core in a few years, so I'm not up to speed on what we should use as a minimum. If Garvin doesn't have any objection I will set it to 1.4, since I don't see anything in 1.4.1 release that would impact the plugin.

And thanks for the bug fixes! That makes my life easier! I'll update the plugin, huddle with Garvin, and hopefully get this into Spartacus tomorrow or the next day!

Anyone else watching want to test it out?