How to Use Amazon's ItemSearch Web Service From Flex

The Silverlight Flex language lets you create animations and real-time reporting for your website. You must incorporate the Amazon WSDL into your Flex project to display content from Amazon's Item Search Web Service, which is a service that connects your site to the large inventory of books sold on Amazon. After you integrate the WSDL, you can perform a simple search on the service to display a list of books.

Instructions

1. Open the Flex editor on your desktop and open the project in which you want to include the Amazon service.

2. Add the Amazon Web service WSDL. The WSDL is a file that defines all of the functions and properties of the Web service. Copy the following code to your page:

   <mx:WebService wsdl="http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/AWSECommerceService.wsdl" id="amazonService" result="showResult(event)" showBusyCursor="true"/>

3. Add a function that uses the Web service to search for a particular item or a list of items. The following code shows you how to set up a search:

   <mx:Script>
   function amazonsearch(){
   var searchParams:Object = new Object();
   searchParams.SearchIndex = "Books";
   searchParams.Keywords = "search terms";
   var search:Object = new Object();
   search.Request = searchParams;
   amazonService.ItemSearch(search);
   }
   </mx:Script>

   Replace "search terms" with the terms you want to use to find a list of books.

4. Add a button that runs the search query when the user clicks it. The following code adds a button to your form to perform the search:

   <mx:HBox width="100%">
   <mx:TextInput id="searchTerm" width="50%"/>
   <mx:Button click="amazon()" label="Search"/>
   </mx:HBox>

References

• Digital Primates: Using Amazon’s ItemSearch WebService from Flex